•■■■ 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 





'^a^u^k 



THE 



SPEECH OF MONKEYS 



R. L. GARNER 



IN TWO PARTS 



mew J^otft 

CHARLES L. WEBSTER AND COMPANY 

1892 



Copyright, 1892, by 

CHARLES L. WEBSTER & COMPANY 

[All Rights Reserved.} 






Dedication. 

TO MY DEVOTED. .. WIFE, 

WHOSE ZEAL FOR MY SUCCESS IS THE LIGHT WHICH GUIDES ME ALONG 

THE HIGHWAY OF MY LABORS : AND TO THOSE 

EARNEST FRIENDS, 

Mr. WALTER S. LOGAN, Judge CHARLES P. DALY, Mr. SAM 

UEL S. McCLURE, Hon. O. B. POTTER, Dr ALEXANDER 

MELVILLE BELL, Col. JOHN HAY, Prof. S. E. 

TILLMAN, MRS. HENRY DRAPER, MR. J. V. 

BOOREAM, Mr. G. HILTON SCRIB- 

NER, AND Mr. B. SCHLESINGER, 

WHO HAVE OPENED THEIR PURSES, AS THEY OPENED THEIR HEARTS, 

AND AFFORDED ME THAT AID WHICH MAKES IT 

POSSIBLE FOR ME TO CONTINUE MY RESEARCHES. WITH 

THEM I SHALL GLADLY SHARE THE 

GLORY OF ALL THAT MY EFFORTS MAY ACHIEVE. 

TO THEM, 

WITH PROFOUND AND AFFECTIONATE GRATITUDE, 

THIS FIRST CONTRIBUTION TO SCIENCE ON THIS SUBJECT IS JUSTLY 

DEDICATED BY 

THE AUTHOR. 



PREFACE. 



I desire here to express my gratitude to The 
Nezv Review.. The North American Review \ The 
Cosmopolitan, The Forum, and many of the lead- 
ing journals of America, for the use of their 
valuable and popular pages through which my 
work has been given to the public. To the 
press, both foreign and American, I gladly pay 
my tribute of thanks for the liberal discussion, 
candid criticism, and kind consideration which 
they have bestowed upon my efforts to solve the 
great problem of speech. 

In contributing to science this mite, I do not 
mean to intimate that my task has been com- 
pleted, for I am aware that I have only begun 
to explore the field through which we may hope 
to pass beyond the confines of our own realm, 
and invade the lower spheres of life. 

This volume is intended as a record of my 
work and a voluntary report of my progress, to 



Vlll PREFACE. 

let the world know with what results my labors 
have been rewarded, and with the hope that it 
may be the means of inducing others to pursue 
like investigations. 

In prosecuting my studies, I have had no prec- 
edents to guide me, no literature to consult, 
and no land-marks by which to steer my course. 
I have, therefore, been compelled to find my own 
means, suggest my own experiments, and solve 
my own problems. Not a line on this subject is 
to be found in all the literature of the world ; and 
yet the results which I have obtained have far 
surpassed my highest hopes. Considering the 
difficulties under wmich I have been compelled 
to w r ork, I have been rewarded with results for 
which I dared not hope, and this inspires me to 
believe that my success will meet my highest 
wishes when I am placed in touch with such- 
subjects as I expect to find in the forests of trop- 
ical Africa. 

The records in Part I. of this volume are only 
a few of my experiments ; but as they illustrate my 
methods and set forth the results, they will serve 
to show, in a measure, the scope of my work. 
I shall not describe like experiments only in 
so far as may be found proper to confirm the de- 



PREFACE. IX 

duetions from one experiment by the results of 
another. 

In Part II. of this work will be found a defi- 
nition of the word speech as I have used it, and 
the deductions which I have made from my ex- 
periments. I shall not venture into any extreme 
theories, either to confirm or controvert any 
opinions of others, but simply commit to the 
world these initial facts and the working hy- 
potheses upon which I have proceeded to obtain 
them. 

I beg here to call attention to Chapter V. of 
Part II., in which I have mentioned the partic- 
ular characteristics that mark the sounds made 
by monkeys as speech and distinguish them from 
mere automatic sounds. 

With sincere convictions, I commit this vol- 
ume to the friends of science as the first con- 
tribution upon this subject. 

R. L. Garner. 

New York, June ist, 1892. 



CONTENTS. 



PART I. 

PAGE 

Dedication, v 

Preface, . vii 

CHAPTER I. 

Early Impressions. — First Observations of Monkeys. — 
First Efforts to Learn their Speech. — Barriers. — 
The Phonograph Used.— A Visit to Jokes.— My Ef- 
forts to Speak to him. — The Sound of Alarm In- 
spires Terror, 3 

CHAPTER II. 

The Reconciliation. — The Acquaintance of Jennie. — The 
Salutation. — The Words for Food and Drink.— Little 
Banquo, Dago, McGinty, and others, . .14 

CHAPTER III. 
Monkeys Have Favorite Colors. — Can Distinguish Num- 
bers and Quantity. — Music and Art very Limited, . 22 

CHAPTER IV. 

Pedro's Speech Recorded. — Delivered to Puck Through 
the Phonograph. — Little Darwin Learns a New Word, 30 

CHAPTER V. 

Five Little Brown Cousins : Mickie, Nemo, Dodo, Nig- 
ger, and McGinty. — Nemo Apologizes to Dodo, . 40 



Xll CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VI. 

PAGE 

Dago Talks about the Weather. — Tells me of his Trou- 
bles. — Dodo in the " Balcony Scene." — Her Portrait 
by a Great Artist. 49 

CHAPTER VII. 

Interpretation of Words. — Specific Words and Signs. — 
The Negative Sign and Sounds. — Affirmative Expres- 
sions. — Possible Origin of Negative and Positive 
Signs, 57 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Meeting with Nellie. — Nellie was my Guest. — Her Speech 
and Manners. — The Little Blind Girl. — One of 
Nellie's Friends. — Her Sight and Hearing. — Her 
Toys and how she Played with them, . . .68 

CHAPTER IX. 
Nellie's Affections. — A Little Flirtation. — Some of my 
Personal Friends, 79 

CHAPTER X. 
The Capuchin Vocabulary. — What I Have Found. — What 

I Foresee in it, . . . . . . .86 

CHAPTER XI. 
The Word for Food in the Rhesus Dialect.— The Rhesus 
Sound of Alarm. — The Dialect of the White-Face. — 
Dolly Varden, Uncle Remus, and others, . . .91 

CHAPTER XII. 
Atelles or Spider-Monkeys. — The Common Macaque. — 
Java Monkeys and what They Say. — A Happy 
Family, 99 

CHAPTER XIII. 

The Extent of my Experiments. — Apes and Baboons. — 

Miscellaneous Records of Sounds. — The Vocal Index, 108 



CONTENTS. Xlll 

CHAPTER XIV. 

PAGE 

Monkeys and the Mirror. — Some of their Antics. — Baby 

Macaque and her Papa. — Some, other Monkeys, . 114 

CHAPTER XV. 

Man and Ape. — Their Physical Relations. — Their Mental 
Relations. — Evolution was the Means. — Who was the 
Progenitor of the Ape? — The Scale of Life, . .121 

CHAPTER XVI. 

The Faculty of Thought.— Emotion and Thought.— In- 
stinct and Reason. — Monkeys Reason. — Some Ex- 
amples, . . . 129 



PART II. 



CHAPTER I. 

Speech Defined.— The True Nature of Speech.-— The Use 
of Speech. — The Limitations of Speech, . . .143 

CHAPTER II. 

The Motives of Speech. — Expression. — The Beginning of 

Human Speech. — The Present Condition of Speech, . 150 

CHAPTER III. 

Language Embraces Speech. — Speech, Words, Grammar, 

and Rhetoric, 155 

CHAPTER IV. 

Life and Consciousness. — Consciousness and Emotion. — 
Emotion and Thought. — Thought and Expression. — 
Expression and Speech. — The Vocal Organs and 
Sound. — Speech in City and Country. — Music, Pas- 
sions, and Taste. — Life and Reason 161 



XIV CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER V. 

PAGE 

Certain Marks which Characterize the Sounds of Monkevs 
as Speech. — Sounds Accompanied by Gestures. — Cer- 
tain Acts Follow Certain Sounds. — They Acquire New- 
Sounds. — Their Speech Addressed to Certain Individ- 
uals. — Deliberation and Premeditation. — They Re- 
member and Anticipate Results. — Thought and 
Reason, 169 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Phonograph as an Aid to Science.— Vowels the Basis 
of Phonation. — Consonants Developed from a Vowel 
Basis. — Vowels are Compound. — The Analysis of 
Vowels by the Phonograph. — Current Theories of 
Sound. — Augmentation of Sounds. — Sound- Waves and 
Sound-Units. — Consonants among the Lower Races, 176 

CHAPTER VII. 

The Human Voice. — Human Bag-Pipe. — Human Piccolo, 
Flute, and Fife. — The Voice as a Whistle. — Music and 
Noise. — Dr. Bell and his Visible Speech, . . .185 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Some Curious Facts in Vocal Growth. — Children and 
Consonants. — Single, Double, and Treble Conso- 
nants. — Sounds of Birds. — Fishes and their Lan- 
guage. — Insects and their Language, . . . 189 

CHAPTER IX. 

Facts and Fancies of Speech. — Language in the Vege- 
table Kingdom. — Language in the Mineral Kingdom, 199 

CHAPTER X. 

The Speech and Reason of Domestic Animals.— Dash 
and the Baby.— Two Collies Talk.— Eunice Under- 
stands her Mistress. — Two Dogs and the Phono- 
graph.— A Canine Family.— Cats and Dogs.— Insects, 207 



TART I. 
EXPERIMENTS. 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 



CHAPTER I. 



Early Impressions. — First Observations of Monkeys. — First 
Efforts to Learn their Speech.— Barriers.— The Phono- 
graph Used.— A Visit to Jokes.— My Efforts to Speak to 
him. — The Sound of Alarm Inspires Terror. 

From childhood, I have believed that all kinds 
of animals have some mode of speech by which 
they can talk among their own kind ; and I have 
often wondered why man has never tried to learn 
it. I have often wondered how it occurred to 
man to whistle to a horse or dog - instead of using 
some sound more like their own, and even yet 
I am at a loss to know how such a sound has 
ever become a fixed means of calling these ani- 
mals. I am not alone in my belief that all ani- 
mals have some way to make known to others 
some certain things; but to my mind, the means 
have never been well defined. 

About eight years ago, in the Cincinnati Zo- 
ological Garden, I was deeply impressed by the 



4 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

conduct of a number of monkeys occupying a 
cage with a huge, savage mandril, which they 
seemed very much to fear and dislike. By means 
of a wall the cage was divided into two compart- 
ments, through which was a small doorway, just 
large enough to allow the occupants of the cage 
to pass from one room to the other. The inner 
compartment of the cage was used for their win- 
ter quarters and sleeping-apartments ; the outer, 
consisting simply of a well-constructed iron cage, 
was intended for exercise and summer occupancy. 
Every movement of this mandril seemed to be 
closely watched by the monkeys that were in a 
position to see him, and instantly reported to the 
others in the adjoining compartment. I watched 
them for hours, and felt assured that they had a 
form of speech by means of which they com- 
municated with each other. During the time I 
remained, I discovered that a certain sound 
would invariably cause them to act in a certain 
way, and in the course of my visit I discovered 
that I could myself tell by the sounds the mon- 
keys would make just what the mandril was do- 
ing — that is, I could tell whether he was asleep 
or whether he was moving about in his cage. 
Having interpreted one or two of these sounds, 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 5 

I felt inspired with the belief that I could learn 
them, and felt that the " key to the secret cham- 
ber" was within my grasp. 

I regarded the task of learning the speech 
of monkeys as very much the same as learning 
that of some strange race of mankind — -more 
difficult in the degree of its inferiority, but less 
in volume. 

Year by year, as new ideas were revealed to 
me, new barriers arose, and I began to realize 
how great a task was mine. One difficulty was 
to utter the sounds I heard, another was to recall 
them, and yet another to translate them. But 
impelled by an inordinate hope and not discour- 
aged by poor success, I continued my studies 
as best I could in the gardens of New York, 
Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Chicago, and with 
such specimens as I could find from time to time 
with travelling shows, hand-organs, aboard some 
ship, or kept as a family pet. I must acknowl- 
edge my debt of gratitude to all these little 
creatures who have aided me in the study of 
their native tongue. 

Having contended for some years with the 
difficulties mentioned, a new idea dawned upon 
me, and after maturely considering it, I felt 



6 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

assured of ultimate success. I went to Washing- 
ton and proposed the novel experiment of acting 
as interpreter between two monkeys. Of course, 
this first evoked from the great fathers of science 
a smile of incredulity ; but when I explained the 
means by which I expected to accomplish this, a 
shadow of seriousness came over the faces of 
those dignitaries to whom I first proposed the 
novel feat. I procured a phonograph * upon 
which to record the sounds of the monkeys. I 
separated two monkeys which had occupied the 
same cage together for some time, and placed 
them in separate rooms of the building, where 
they could not see or hear each other. I then 
arranged the phonograph near the cage of the 
female, and by various means induced her to 
utter a few sounds, which were recorded on the 
cylinder of the instrument. The machine was 
then placed near the cage containing the male 
and the record repeated to him, and his conduct > 
closely studied. He gave evident signs of recog- 
nizing the sounds, and at once began a search 
for the mysterious monkey doing the talking. 

* While I use the word phonograph throughout this work, 
I must state that many of my experiments were made with 
the graphophone. 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 7 

His perplexity at this strange affair cannot well 
be described. The familiar voice of his mate 
would induce him to approach, but that squeak- 
ing, chattering horn was a feature which he 
could not comprehend. He traced the sounds, 
however, to the source from which they came, 
and failing to find his mate, thrust his arm into 
the horn quite up to his shoulder, then withdrew 
it, and peeped into it again and again. The ex- 
pressions of his face were indeed a study. I 
then secured a few sounds of his voice and deliv- 
ered them to the female, who showed some signs 
of interest, but the record was very imperfect 
and her manner seemed quite indifferent. In 
this experiment for the first time in the history 
of language was the simian speech reduced to 
record, and while the results were not fully up 
to my hopes, they served to inspire me to fur- 
ther efforts to find the fountain-head from which 
flows out the great river of human speech. 
Having satisfied myself that each one recognized 
the sound made by the other when delivered 
through the phonograph, I felt rewarded for my 
labor and assured of the possibility of learning 
the language of monkeys. The faith of others 
was strengthened also, and while this experiment 



8 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

was very crude and imperfect, it served to con- 
vince me that my opinions were correct as to the 
speech of these animals. 

In this case I noticed the defects which oc- 
curred in my work, and provided against them, 
as well as I could, for the future. Soon after 
this I went to Chicago and Cincinnati, where I 
made a variety of records of the sounds of a 
great number of monkeys, and among others I 
secured a splendid record of the two chimpanzees 
contained in the Cincinnati collection, which I 
brought home with me for study. The records 
that I made of various specimens of the simian 
race I repeated to myself over and over until I 
became familiar with them and learned to imitate 
a few of them, mostly by the use of mechanical 
devices. After having accomplished this, I re- 
turned to Chicago, and went at once to visit a 
small Capuchin monkey whose record had been 
my chief study. Standing near his cage I imi- 
tated a sound which I had translated " milk ;" but 
from many tests I concluded it meant "food," 
which opinion has been somewhat modified by 
many later experiments that lead me to believe 
that he uses it in a still wider sense. It is dim- 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 9 

cult to find any formula of human speech equiv- 
alent to it. While the Capuchin uses it relating 
to food and sometimes to drink, I was unable to 
detect any difference in the sounds. He also 
seemed to connect the same sound to every kindly 
office done him and to use it as a kind of " Shib- 
boleth." More recently, however, I have de- 
tected in the sound slight changes of inflection 
under different conditions, until I am now led 
to believe that the meaning of the word depends 
somewhat, if not wholly, on its modulation. 
The phonetic effect is rich and rather flute-like, 
and the word resembles somewhat the word 
"who." Its dominant is a pure vocal "u," 
sounded like "00" in "too," which has a faint 
initial " wh," both elements of which are sounded, 
and the word ends with a vanishing "w." The 
literal formula by which I would represent it is 
"wh-oo-w." The word which I have translated 
"drink" begins with a faint guttural "ch," 
glides through a sound resembling the French 
diphthong "eu," and ends with a slight "y" 
sound, as in "ye." 

So far I have found no trace of the English 
vowels " a, " " i, " or " o, " unless it be in the sound 



IO THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

emitted under stress of great alarm or in case 
of assault, in which I find a close resemblance 
to the vowel "i" short, as in "it." 

After having acquired a sound or two I ex- 
tended my field of operations, and began to try 
my skill as a simian linguist on every specimen 
with which I came in contact. 

In Charleston a gentleman owns a fine speci- 
men of the brown Cebus whose name is Jokes. 
He is naturally shy of strangers, but on my first 
visit to him I addressed him in his native tongue, 
arid he really seemed to regard me very kindly; 
he would eat from my hand and allow me to 
caress him through the bars of his cage. 

He eyed me with evident curiosity, but inva- 
riably responded to the word that I uttered in his 
own language. On my third visit to him I de- 
termined to try the effect of the peculiar sound 
of " alarm" or " assault" which I had learned 
from one of this species; but I cannot very well 
represent it in letters. While he was eating 
from my hand I gave this peculiar piercing note, 
and he instantly sprang to a perch in the top of 
his cage ; thence in and out of his sleeping-apart- 
ment with great speed and almost wild with 
fear. As I repeated the sound his fears seemed 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. II 

to increase, until from a mere sense of compas- 
sion I desisted. No amount of coaxing would 
induce him to return to me or to accept any 
offer of peace which I could make. I retired to 
a distance of about twenty feet from his cage, 
and his master induced him to descend from the 
perch, which he did with the greatest reluctance 
and suspicion. I gave the sound again from 
where I stood, and it produced almost the same 
results as before. The monkey gave out a sin- 
gular sound in response to my efforts to appease 
him, but refused to become reconciled. 

After the lapse of eight or ten days I had not 
been able to reinstate myself in his good graces 
or to induce him to accept anything whatever 
from me. At this juncture I resorted to harsher 
means of bringing him to terms and began to 
threaten him with a rod. At first he resented 
this, but soon yielded and came down merely 
from fear. He would place the side of his head 
on the floor, put out his tongue, and utter a very 
plaintive sound having a slight interrogative 
inflection. At first this act quite defied inter- 
pretation ; but during the same period I was 
visiting a little monkey called Jack. For stran- 
gers we were quite good friends, and he allowed 



12 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

me many liberties, which the family assured me 
he had uniformly refused to others. 

On one of my visits he displayed his temper 
and made an attack upon me, because I refused 
to let go of a saucer from which I was feeding 
him some milk. I jerked him up by the chain 
and slapped him sharply, whereupon he instantly 
laid the side of his head on the floor, put out his 
tongue, and made just such a sound as Jokes had 
made a number of times before. It occurred to 
me that it was a sign of surrender, and many 
subsequent tests have confirmed this opinion. 

Mrs. M. French Sheldon, in her journey 
through East Africa, shot a small monkey in a 
forest near Lake Charla. She described to me 
how the little fellow stood high up in a tree and 
chattered to her in his sharp, musical voice until 
at the crack of her gun he fell mortally wounded. 
When he was laid dying at her feet, he turned 
his bright little eyes pleadingly upon her as if to 
ask for pity. Touched by his appeal, she took 
the little creature in her arms to try to soothe 
him. Again and again he would touch his 
tongue to her hand as if kissing it, and seemed 
to wish in the hour of death to be caressed even 
by the hand that slew him, and which had taken 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 1 3 

from him without reward that life which could 
be of no value except to spare to the wild forest 
where his kindred monkeys live. 

This peculiar mode of expressing submission 
seems to be very widely used, and from her de- 
scription of the actions of that monkey his con- 
duct must have been identical with that of the 
Cebus, and to my mind may justly be interpreted 
to mean, "Pity me; I will not harm you." I 
have recently learned that a Scotch naturalist, 
commenting on my description of this act and its 
meaning, quite agrees with me, and states that 
he has observed the same thing in other species 
of monkeys. 



CHAPTER II. 

The Reconciliation. — The Acquaintance of Jennie. — The Salu- 
tation—The Words for Food and Drink.— Little Banquo, 
Dago, McGinty, and others. 

During a period of many weeks I visited Jokes 
almost daily, but after the lapse of more than two 
months I had not won him back nor quieted his 
suspicions against me. On my approach he would 
manifest great fear and go through the act of 
humiliation described above. I observed that he 
entertained an intense hatred for a negro boy on 
the place, who teased and vexed him on all oc- 
casions. I had the boy come near the cage, and 
Jokes fairly raved with anger. I took a stick and 
pretended to beat the boy, and this delighted 
Jokes very greatly. I held the boy near enough 
to the cage to allow the monkey to scratch and 
pull his clothes, and this would fill his little sim- 
ian soul with joy. I would then release the boy, 
and to the evident pleasure of Jokes would drive 
him away by throwing wads of paper at him. I 
repeated this a number of times, and by such 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 1 5 

means we again became the best of friends. 
After each encounter with the boy Jokes would 
come to the bars, touch my hand with his tongue, 
chatter and play with my fingers, and show every 
sign of confidence and friendship. He always 
warned me of the approach of any one, and his 
conduct toward them was largely governed by 
my own. He never failed after this to salute 
me with the sound described in the first chapter. 
About the same time I paid a few visits to an- 
other little monkey of the same species, named 
Jennie. Her master had warned me in advance 
that she was not well disposed toward strangers. 
At my request he had her chained in a small 
side yard, which he forbade any of the family en- 
tering. When I approached the little lady for 
the first time I gave her the usual salutation, 
which she responded to and seemed to under- 
stand. I unceremoniously sat down by her side 
and fed her from my hands. She eyed me with 
evident interest and curiosity, while I studied 
her every act and expression. During the proc- 
ess of this mutual investigation, a negro girl 
who lived with the family, overcome by curi- 
osity, stealthily entered the yard and came up 
within a few feet of us. I determined to sac- 



iG THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

rifice this girl upon the altar of science; so I 
arose and placed her between the monkey and 
myself and vigorously sounded the alarm or 
menace. Jennie flew into a fury, while I con- 
tinued to sound the alarm and at the same time 
pretended to attack the girl with a club and some 
paper wads, thus causing the monkey to believe 
that the girl had uttered the alarm and made the 
assault. I then drove the girl from the yard 
with a great show of violence, and for days after- 
ward she could not feed or approach the little 
simian. This confirmed my opinion of the 
meaning of the sound, which can be fairly imi- 
tated by placing the back of the hand gently on 
the mouth and kissing it with great force, pro- 
longing the sound for some seconds. This imi- 
tation, however, is indifferent and its quality is 
especially noticeable when analyzed on the pho- 
nograph. The pitch corresponds to the highest 
" F" sharp on the piano, while the word " drink" 
is two octaves lower and the word "food" three. 
On one occasion I visited the garden in Cin- 
cinnati, and found in a cage a small Capuchin, 
to whom I gave the name Banquo. It was near 
night and the visitors had left the house, and 
the little monkey, worried out by the day's an- 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. I J 

noyance from visitors, sat quietly in the back of 
his cage, as though he was glad another day was 
done. I approached the cage and uttered the 
sound which I have described and translated 
"drink." My first effort caught his attention 
and caused him to turn and look at me. He 
then arose and answered me with the same word, 
and came at once to the front of the cage. He 
looked at me as if in doubt, and I repeated the 
word. He responded with the same and turned 
to a small pan in his cage, which he took up and 
placed near the door through which the keeper 
usually passed his food, returned to me, and ut- 
tered the word again. I asked the keeper for 
some milk, which he did not have, but brought 
me some water instead. The efforts of my little 
simian friend to secure the glass were very 
earnest, and his pleading manner and tone as- 
sured me of his extreme thirst I allowed him 
to dip his hand into the glass., and he would then 
lick the water from his fingers and reach again. 
I kept the glass out of reach of his hand, and he 
would repeat the sound earnestly and look at me 
beseechingly as if to say .- " Please give me some 
more." I was thus convinced that the word 
which I had translated "milk" must also mean 



1 8 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

"water," and from this and other tests I at last 
determined that it meant "drink" in its broad 
sense, and possibly " thirst." It evidently ex- 
pressed his desire for something with which to 
allay his thirst. The sound is very difficult to 
imitate and quite impossible to write exactly. 

On one of my visits to the Chicago garden I 
stood with my side to a cage containing a small 
Capuchin, and gave the sound which I have trans- 
lated " milk." It caused him to turn and look at 
me, and on repeating the sound a few times he 
answered me very distinctly with the same, pick- 
ing up the pan from which he usually drank, and 
as I repeated the word he brought the pan to 
the front of the cage, set it down and came up to 
the bars, and uttered the word distinctly. I had 
not shown him any milk or any kind of food; 
but the man in charge, at my request, brought 
me some milk, which I gave to him. He drank 
it with great delight ; then looked at me and 
held up his pan, repeating the sound. I am 
quite sure that he used the same sound each 
time that he wanted milk. During this same 
visit, I tried many experiments with the word 
which I am now convinced means " food" or 
"hunger." And I was led to the belief that he 



i 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 1 9 

used the same word for apple, carrot, bread, and 
banana ; but a few later experiments have led me 
to modify this view in a measure, since the pho- 
nograph shows me slight variations of the sound, 
and I now think it probable that these faint in- 
flections may possibly indicate a difference in the 
kinds of food he has in mind. However, they 
usually recognize this sound, even when poorly 
imitated. I am impressed with the firm belief 
that in this word I have found the clew to the 
great secret of speech ; and while I have taken 
only one short step in the direction of its solution, 
I have pointed out the way which leads to it. 

In the fall of 1891 I visited New York for the 
purpose of experimenting with the monkeys in 
Central Park. Early one morning I repaired to 
the monkey-house, and for the first time ap- 
proached a cage containing five brown Capuchins, 
whom I saluted with the word which I have 
translated "food," and which seems to be an 
" open-sesame" to the hearts of all monkeys of 
this species. On delivering this word one of 
them responded promptly and came to the front 
of the cage. I repeated it two or three times 
and the remaining four came to the front, and as 
I thrust my fingers through the bars of the cage 



20 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

they took hold of them and began playing with 
great familiarity and apparent pleasure. They 
.seemed to recognize the sound and to realize 
that it had been delivered to them by myself. 
Whether they regarded me as a great ape, mon- 
key, or some other kind of animal speaking their 
tongue, I do not know. But they evidently un- 
derstood the sound, though up to this time I had 
shown them no food or water. A little later I se- 
cured some apples and carrots and gave them in 
small bits in response to their continual requests 
for food, and this further confirmed my belief that 
I had translated the word correctly. 

This was gratifying to me in view of the fact 
that I was accompanied by two gentlemen who 
had been permitted to witness the experiment, 
and it was evident to them that the monkeys 
understood the sound. I placed the phonograph 
in order and made a record of the sound, which I 
preserved for study. After an absence of some 
days, I returned to the park and went to the mon- 
key-house. They recognized me as I entered the 
door, notwithstanding there were many visitors 
present. They began begging me to come to 
their cage, which I did, and gave them my hand 
to play with. One of them in particular, whose 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 2 1 

name is McGinty, showed every sign of pleas- 
ure at my visit; he would play with my fingers, 
hug them., and caress them in the most affectionate 
manner. Another occupant of the same cage 
had shown a disposition to become friendly with 
me, and on this occasion came bravely to the 
bars of the cage and showed a desire to share the 
pleasure of my visit with his little simian brother. 
But this was denied him on any terms by Mc- 
Ginty, who pounced upon him and drove him, 
away, as he also did the other monkeys in the 
cage in order to monopolize my entire society 
himself. He refused to allow any other inmate 
of the cage to receive my caresses or any part of 
the food that I had brought them. 

I spent the past winter in Washington and New 
York, much of the time in company with these 
little creatures, and have made many novel and 
curious experiments, some of which have resulted 
in surprises to myself. Among the facts which 
I have obtained, I may state that certain monkeys 
can count three; that they discern values by 
quantity and by number ; that they have favorite 
colors and are pleased with some musical sounds. 
I shall explain how I arrived at some of these 
conclusions, in order that I may not be supposed 
to have merely guessed at them. 



CHAPTER III. 

Monkeys Have Favorite Colors. — Can Distinguish Numbers 
and Quantity. —Music and Art very Limited. 

In order to ascertain whether monkeys have 
any choice of colors or not, I selected some 
bright-colored candies, balls, marbles, bits of 
ribbon, etc. I took a piece of pasteboard, and on 
it placed a few bright-colored bits of candy, 
which I offered to a monkey and watched to see 
whether he would select a certain color or not. 
In this experiment I generally used two colors 
at a time, and changed their places from time to 
time in order to determine whether he selected 
the color by design or accident. After having 
determined which of two colors he preferred, I 
substituted a third color for the one which he 
cared least for, and continued thus until I ex- 
hausted the list of bright colors. By changing 
the arrangement of the objects a great number 
of times, it could be ascertained with compara- 
tive certainty whether the color was his prefer- 
ence or not. I find that all monkeys do not se- 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 23 

lect the same color, nor does the same monkey 
invariably select the same color at different times ; 
but I think that generally bright green is a favor- 
ite color with the Capuchins, and their second 
choice is white. In a few cases white seemed 
to be their preference. I have sometimes used 
paper wads of various colors, or bits of candy of 
the same flavor rolled in various-colored papers. 
They seemed to choose the same colors in select- 
ing their toys. I have sometimes used arti- 
ficial flowers, and find that as a rule they will 
select a flower having many green leaves about 
it. It may be that they associate this color with 
some green food which they are fond of, and 
consequently that they are influenced by this in 
selecting other things. I kept a cup for a mon- 
key to drink milk from, on the sides of which 
were some brilliant flowers and green leaves, and 
she would frequently quit drinking the milk to 
play with the flowers on the cup, and seemed 
never able to understand why she could not 
get hold of them. In one test I had a board 
about two feet long, and laid a few pieces of white 
and pink candies in four places on it. The mon- 
key took the white from each pile before touch- 
ing the pink ; except in one instance it took the 



24 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

pink piece from one pile. I repeated this test 
many times. In another test I took a white 
paper ball in one hand and a pink one in the 
other, and held out my hands to the monkey, 
who selected the white one nearly every time, 
although I changed hands with the balls from 
time to time. These experiments were mostly 
confined to the Cebus monkeys, but a few of 
them were made with Macaques. They seem to 
be attracted generally by all brilliant colors, but 
when reduced to a choice between two, such 
seems to be their tastes. 

In my efforts to ascertain their mathematical 
skill, I would take in one hand a little platter 
containing one nut, or one small bit of some- 
thing to eat, such as a piece of apple or carrot 
cut into a small cube. In the other hand I held 
a small platter with two or three such articles of 
the same size and color, and holding them just 
out of reach of the monkey and changing them 
from hand to hand, I observed that the monkey 
would try to reach the one containing the greater 
number. He readily discerned which platter 
contained one and which contained two or three 
pieces. I was long in doubt whether he distin- 
guished by number or by quantity, and my belief 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 25 

was that it was by quantity only. I first deter- 
mined that he could tell singular from plural, by 
making the one piece larger and sometimes of a 
different shape, and from his choice of these I 
quite satisfied my own mind that he could dis- 
tinguish by number. I next set out to find how 
far in numerals his acquirements reached, and 
after a great number of indecisive trials I fell 
upon this simple plan. I took a little square 
wooden box and made a hole in one side just 
large enough for the monkey to withdraw his 
hand with a marble in it. I took three marbles 
of the same size and color and gave them to the 
monkey to play with. After a time I put the 
marbles in a box and allowed him to take them 
out, which he could do by taking out only one 
at a time. I repeated this several times, so as to 
impress his mind with the number of marbles in 
the box. I then concealed one of the marbles 
and returned two to the box. On taking them 
out he evidently missed the absent one, felt in 
the box, arose and looked around where he had 
been sitting. Then he would put his hand into 
the box again and look at me ; but failing to find 
it, he became reconciled and began to play with 
the two. When he had become content with 



26 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

the two I abstracted one of them, and when he 
failed to find it he began to search for it and 
seemed quite unwilling to proceed without it. 
He would put the one back into the box and take 
it out again as if in hope that it might find the 
other. I helped him to look for the missing 
marbles, and, of course, soon found them. 
When he learned that I could find the lost mar- 
bles he would appeal to me as soon as he would 
miss them, and in several instances he would 
take his little black fingers and open my lips 
to see if I had concealed them in my mouth — the 
place where all monkeys conceal what they wish 
to keep in safety from other monkeys, who never 
venture to put their fingers into one another's 
mouths, and when any article is once lodged in a 
monkey's mouth it is safe from the reach of all 
the tribe. I repeated this until I felt quite sure 
of the ability of my subject to count three, and 
I then increased the number of marbles to four. 
When I would abstract one of them, sometimes 
he seemed to miss it, or at least to be in doubt, 
but would soon proceed with his play and not 
worry himself about it ; yet he rarely failed to 
show that he was aware that something was 
wrong. Whether he missed one from four or 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 2 1 / 

only acted on general principle, I do not know ; but 
that he missed one from three was quite evident. 

I may here add that there is a great differ- 
ence in different specimens, and their tastes vary 
like those of human beings. The same idea is 
much clearer to some monkeys than it is to others, 
and a choice of colors much more definite ; but I 
think that all of them assign to different num- 
bers a difference of value. Some are talkative 
and others taciturn. I think I may state with 
safety that the Cebus is the most intelligent and 
talkative of all the monkeys I have known ; that 
the old-world monkeys, as a group, are more 
taciturn and less intelligent than the new- world 
monkeys; but I do not mean to include the an- 
thropoid apes in this remark. 

As a test of their taste for music or musical 
sounds, I took three little bells, which I sus- 
pended by three strings, one end of which was 
tied to a button. The bells were all alike ex- 
cept that from two of them I had removed the 
clappers. I dropped the bells through the 
meshes of the cage about a* foot apart and allowed 
the monkey to play with them. I soon discov- 
ered that he was attracted by the one which con- 
tained the clapper. He played with it and soon 



28 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

became quite absorbed in it. I attracted his at- 
tention to another part of the cage with some 
food, and while he was thus diverted I changed 
the position of the bells by withdrawing and 
dropping them through other meshes. On his 
return he would go to the place he had left, and 
of course get a bell with no clapper in it. He 
would drop this and take another, until he found 
the one with the clapper, which showed clearly 
that the sound was a part of the attraction. I 
have repeated to monkeys many musical records 
on the phonograph ; but frequently they show no 
sign of concern, while at other times they display 
some interest. It may be, however, that music 
as we understand it is somewhat too high for 
them. Musical sounds seem to attract and afford 
them pleasure, but they do not appreciate melody 
or rhythm. As monkeys readily discern the 
larger of two pieces of food from the smaller, and 
by the aid of concrete things can count a limited 
number, I feel justified in saying that they have 
the first principles of mathematics as dealing 
with numbers and quantity in a concrete form. 
Their ability to distinguish colors and their se- 
lection thereof would indicate that they possess 
the first rudiment of art as dealing with color. 






THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 20, 

And the fact that they are attracted in a slight 
degree by musical sounds shows that they pos- 
sess the germ from which music itself is born. 
I must not be understood to claim that they possess 
anything more than the mere germ from which 
such faculties might have been evolved. I do 
not think that they have any names for numbers, 
colors, or quantities, nor do I think that they pos- 
sess an abstract idea of these things, except in 
the feeblest degree ; but as the concrete must 
have preceded the abstract idea in the devel- 
opment of human reason, it impresses me that 
these creatures are now in a condition such as 
man has once passed through in the course of 
his evolution, and it is not difficult to understand 
how such feeble faculties may develop into the 
very highest degree of strength and usefulness 
by constant use and culture. 

We find in them the rudiments from which all 
the faculties possessed by man could easily de- 
velop, including thought, reason, speech, and 
the moral and social traits of man. In brief, 
they appear to have at least the raw material out 
of which is made the most exalted attributes of 
man ; and I shall not contest with them the right 
of such possession. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Pedro's Speech Recorded. — Delivered to Puck Through the 
Phonograph. — Little Darwin Learns a New Word. 

In the Washington collection there is a Ca- 
puchin by the name of Pedro. When I first vis- 
ited this bright little monkey he occupied a cage 
in common with several other monkeys of differ- 
ent kinds. All of them seemed to impose upon 
little Pedro, and a mischievous young spider- 
monkey found special delight in catching him by 
the tail and dragging him around the floor of the 
cage. I interfered on behalf of Pedro and drove 
the spider-monkey away. On account of this 
Pedro soon began to look upon me as his bene- 
factor, and when he would see me he would 
scream and beg for me to come to him. I in- 
duced the keeper to place him in a small cage by 
himself, and this he seemed to appreciate very 
much. When I would go to record his sounds 
on the phonograph, I would hold him in one 
hand while he would take the tube in his tiny 
black hands, hold it close up to his mouth, and 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 3 1 

talk into it just like a good little boy who knew 
what to do and how to do it. He would some- 
times laugh, and always chatter to me as long as 
he could see me. He would sit on my hand and 
kiss my cheeks, put his mouth up to my ear and 
chatter just as though he knew what my ears 
were for. He was quite fond of the head-keeper 
and also of the director ; but he entertained a 
great dislike for one of the assistant keepers, and 
he has often told me some very bad things about 
that man, though I could not understand what he 
said. I shall long remember how this dear little 
monkey would cuddle up under my chin and try so 
hard to make me understand some sad story which 
seemed co be the burden of his life. He readily 
understood the sounds of his own speech which 
I repeated to him, and I have made some of the 
best records of his voice that I have ever suc- 
ceeded in making of any monkey, some of which 
I have preserved up to this time. They present 
a wide range of sounds, and I have studied them 
with special care and pleasure, because I knew 
that they were addressed to me in person ; and 
being aware that the little creature was uttering 
these sounds to me with the hope that I would 
understand them, I was more anxious to learn just 



32 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

what he really said to me in this record than if 
it had contained only some casual remark not ad- 
dressed to me. This little simian was born in 
the Amazon Valley, in Brazil, and was named for 
the late emperor. 

A short time ago I borrowed from a dealer in 
Washington a little Capuchin called Puck, and 
had him sent to my apartments, where I kept a 
phonograph. I placed the cage in front of the 
machine upon which I had adjusted the horn and 
had placed the record of my little friend Pedro. 
I concealed myself in an adjoining room, where I 
could watch the conduct of my subject through 
a small hole in the door. I had a string attached 
to the lever of the machine and drawn taut 
through another hole in the door, so that I could 
start the machine at any desired moment, and at 
the same time avoid attracting the attention of 
the monkey, either by my presence or by allow- 
ing him to see anything move. After a time, 
when everything was quiet, I set the machine in 
motion, and treated him to a phonographic re- 
cital by little Pedro. This speech was distinctly 
delivered through the horn to Puck, from whose 
actions it was evident that he recognized it as 
the voice of one of his tribe. He looked at the 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 33 

horn in surprise and made a sound or two, 
glanced around the room, and again uttered a 
couple of sounds as he retired from the horn ap- 
parently somewhat afraid. Again the horn de- 
livered some exclamations in a pure Capuchin 
dialect, which Puck seemed to regard as sounds 
of some importance. He cautiously advanced 
and made a feeble response, but a quick, sharp 
sound from the horn seemed to startle him ; and 
failing to find any trace of a monkey except the 
sound of a voice, he looked at the horn with evi- 
dent suspicion, and scarcely ventured to answer 
any sound it made. When I had delivered to 
him the contents of the record I entered the 
room again, and this seemed to afford him some 
relief. 

A little later I adjusted my apparatus for an- 
other trial, and this time I hung a small mirror 
just above the mouth of the horn. Then retiring 
again from the room I left him to examine his 
new surroundings, and he soon discovered the 
new monkey in the glass and began to caress it 
and chatter to it. After a while I started the 
phonograph again by means of the string, and 
when the horn began to deliver its simian ora- 
tion, it appeared to disconcert and perplex Puck. 



34 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

He would look at the image in the glass, then he 
would look into the horn ; he would retire with 
a feeble grunt and a kind of inquisitive grin, 
showing his little white teeth, and acting as 
though in doubt whether to regard the affair as a 
joke or to treat it as a grim and scientific fact. 
His voice and actions were exactly like those of 
a child declaring in words that he was not afraid, 
but betraying fear in every act, and finally blend- 
ing his feelings into a genuine cry. Puck did 
not cry, but the evidence of fear made the grin 
on his face rather ghostly. Again he would ap- 
proach the mirror, then listen to the sounds 
which came from the horn, and it appeared from 
his conduct that there was a conflict somewhere. 
It was evident that he did not believe that the 
monkey which he saw in the glass was making 
the sounds which came from the horn. He re- 
peatedly put his mouth to the glass and caressed 
the image which he saw there, and at the same 
time showed a grave suspicion and some concern 
about the one which he heard in the horn, and 
tried to keep away from, it as much as possible. 
His conduct in this case was a source of surprise 
to me, as the sounds contained in the record 
which I had repeated to him were all uttered in 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 35 

a mood of anxious, earnest entreaty, which to 
me seemed to contain no sound of anger, warn- 
ing, or alarm, but which, on the contrary, I had 
interpreted as a kind of love-speech, full of 
music and tenderness. I had not learned the 
exact meaning of any one of the sounds con- 
tained in this cylinder, but had ascribed in a 
collective and general way such a meaning to 
this speech. But from Puck's conduct I was led 
to believe that it was a general complaint of 
some kind against those monkeys in that other 
cage who had made life a burden to little Pedro. 
One thing was clear to my mind, and that is that 
Puck interpreted the actions of the monkey which 
he saw in the glass to mean one thing, and the 
sounds which he heard from the horn to mean 
quite another. 

I do not think that their language is capable 
of shading sentences into narrative or giving any 
detail in a complaint, for I have never seen any- 
thing yet among them that would justify one 
in ascribing to them so high a type of speech ; 
but in terms of general grievance it may have 
conveyed to Puck the idea of a monkey in dis- 
tress, and hence his desire to avoid it ; while the 
image in the glass presented to him a picture of 



36 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

his own mood, and he therefore had no cause to 
shun it. I do think, however, that the present 
form of speech used by monkeys is developed far 
above a mere series of grunts and groans, and 
that some species among them have much more 
copious and expressive forms of speech than 
others do. From many experiments with the 
phonograph, I am prepared to say with certainty 
that some have much higher phonetic types than 
others do. I have traced some slight inflections 
which I think beyond a doubt modify the val- 
ues of their sounds. I find monkeys who do 
not make certain inflections at all, although the 
phonation of a species is generally uniform in 
other respects. In some cases it seems to me 
that the inflections differ slightly in the same 
species, but long and constant association seems 
to unify these dialects in some degree, very 
much the same as like causes blend and unify 
the dialects of human speech. I have found 
one instance in which a Capuchin had ac- 
quired two sounds which strictly belonged to 
the tongue of the white-faced Cebus. I was 
surprised when I heard him utter the sounds, 
and thought at first that these sounds were com- 
mon to the speech of both varieties, but on in- 






THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 37 

quiry I found that he had been confined in a cage 
with the white-face for nearly four years, and 
hence my belief that he acquired them during 
that time. 

The most remarkable case which has come un- 
der my observation is one in which a young 
white-face has acquired the sound which means 
food in the Capuchin tongue. This event oc- 
curred under my own eyes. I regard this case 
as so noteworthy, being attended by such con- 
ditions as to show that the monkey had a motive 
in learning the sound, that I shall relate it in 
detail. 

In the room where the monkeys were kept by 
a dealer in Washington, there was a cage which 
contained a young white-faced Cebus of rather 
more than average intelligence. He was a quiet, 
sedate, and thoughtful little monkey, whose gray 
hair and beard gave him quite a venerable as- 
pect, and for this reason I called him Darwin. 
From some cause unknown to me he was afraid 
of me, and I showed him but little attention. 
On the same shelf and in an adjacent cage lived 
the little Capuchin, Puck. The cages were only 
separated by an open wire partition through 
which they, could easily see and hear each other. 



38 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

For some weeks I visited Puck almost daily, and 
in response to his sound for food I always sup- 
plied him with some nuts, banana, or other food. 
I never gave him any of these things to eat un- 
less he would ask me for them in his own speech. 
On one of my visits my attention was attracted 
by little Darwin, who was uttering a strange 
sound which I had never before heard one of his 
species utter. I did not recognize the sound at 
first, but very soon discovered that it was in- 
tended to imitate the sound of the Capuchin, in 
response to which I always gave Puck some nice 
morsel of food. Darwin had undoubtedly ob- 
served that this sound made by Puck was always 
rewarded with something good to eat, and his 
evident motive was to secure a like reward. Af- 
ter this I always gave him some food in acknowh 
edgment of his efforts, and I observed, from day 
to day, that he improved in making this sound 
until at last it could scarcely be detected from 
the sound made by Puck. This was accom- 
plished within a period of less than six weeks 
from my first visit. In this case, at least, I have 
seen one step taken by a monkey in learning the 
tongue of another. This was most interesting 
to me in view of the fact that I had long believed, 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 39 

and had announced as my belief that no mon- 
key ever acquired the sounds made by another 
species, or, indeed, ever tried to do so. I admit, 
however, that this one instance alone is suffi- 
cient to cause me to recede from a conclusion thus 
rendered untenable, and the short time in which 
this one feat was accomplished would indicate 
that the difficulty was not so great as I had re- 
garded it. I still regard it as a rule, however, 
that monkeys do not learn each other's speech, 
but the rule is not without exceptions. 

I have observed and called attention to the 
fact, that when two monkeys of different species 
are caged together, each one will learn to under- 
stand the speech of the other, but as a rule will 
not try to speak it. When he replies at all, it is 
always in his own vernacular. I wish to impress 
the fact that monkeys do not generally carry on a 
connected conversation. Their speech is usually 
limited to a single sound or remark, which is 
replied to in the same manner, and to suppose that 
their conversations are elaborate or of a highly 
social character is to go beyond the bounds of 
reason. This is the respect in which the masses 
fail to understand the real nature of the speech 
of monkeys or other animals. 



CHAPTER V. 

Five Little Brown Cousins: Mickie, Nemo, Dodo. Nigger, 
and McGinty. — Nemo Apologizes to Dodo. 

During the past winter there lived in Central 
Park a bright, fine little monkey by the name of 
Mickie. He did not belong to the park, but was 
merely kept as a guest of the city during the 
absence of his master in Europe. Mickie is a 
well-built, robust, good-natured monkey of the 
Capuchin variety. He does not talk much, ex- 
cept when he wants food or drink, but he and I 
are the best of friends, and I frequently go into 
his cage to have a romp with him and his four 
little cousins. When I first began to visit the 
park in the fall of 1891 Mickie showed a dis- 
position to cultivate my acquaintance, and as it 
ripened into a friendship day by day, we found 
great pleasure in each other's society. As the 
monkey-house was open to the public at 9 o'clock 
in the morning. I had to make my calls at sun- 
rise or thereabouts in order to avoid the visitors 
who daily throng this building. 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 4 1 

In this cage was kept another little boarder of 
the same species which belonged to Mr. G. Hil- 
ton Scribner, of Yonkers. The keeper did not 
know the name or anything of the past history 
of this little stranger, and for want of some 
identity and a name I called him Nemo. He was 
a timid, taciturn little fellow, quite intelligent, 
and possessed of an amount of diplomacy equal to 
that of some human beings. He was the small- 
est monkey in the cage, on which account he was 
somewhat shy of the others. He was thought- 
ful, peaceable, but "full of guile." He sought 
on all occasions to keep on the best terms with 
Mickie, to whom he would toady like a sycophant. 
He would put his little arms about Mickie 's neck 
and hang on to him in the most affectionate man- 
ner. He would follow him like a shadow and 
stay by him like a last hope. If anything ever 
aroused the temper of Mickie it was sure to make 
Nemo mad too ; if Mickie was diverted and would 
laugh, Nemo would laugh also if he was suffer- 
ing with a toothache. He was as completely 
under the control of Mickie as the curl in Mick- 
ie s tail. When I first began to visit them, Nemo 
would see Mickie bite my fingers while we were 
playing, and he supposed it was done in anger. 



42 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

Nemo never lost a chance to bite my fingers, 
which he would always do with all his might; 
but his little teeth were not strong enough to 
hurt me very much. He would only do this af- 
ter seeing Mickie bite me, and he did not evince 
any anger in the act, but appeared to do so 
merely as a duty. He would sneak up to my 
hands and bite me unawares ; then he would run 
to Mickie and put his arm about his neck, just 
as you have seen some boys do when trying to 
curry favor with a larger boy. On one occasion, 
while in the cage with them, he slipped up to 
me and bit my finger, for which I kindly boxed 
his little ears. I would then give Mickie my 
finger and allow him. to bite it, after doing which 
I would slap him gently and then give it to him 
again. I would then allow Nemo to bite my fin- 
ger, and if he bit it too hard I would slap him 
again; and in this manner soon taught him to 
understand that Mickie only bit me in fun, and 
he evidently learned that this was a fact. He 
did not appear, however, to catch the point 
clearly or see any reason therefor, but on all oc- 
casions thereafter he would take my finger in 
his mouth and hold it in his teeth, which were 
scarcely closed upon it. This he would do for a 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 43 

minute at a time without having the least apparent 
motive, except that he had seen Mickie do so. 
Often while holding my finger in this manner 
with a look of seriousness worthy a supreme-court 
judge, he would roll his little eyes at me in the 
most inquiring manner, as if to say, " How is 
that? " 

When he once realized that Mickie was so 
much attached to me, Nemo always showed a 
desire to be on friendly terms with me, and when 
I would go into the cage to play with Mickie and 
McGinty he always wanted to be counted in the 
game. When I had anything for them to eat 
he always wanted a seat of honor at table, and 
he would at times want to fight for me when the 
other monkeys got too friendly. Poor little fel- 
low, he is now dead ; but the image of his cute 
little face and his original character are deeply 
imprinted on my mind. I was never able to secure 
a record of the sounds of his little voice, though I 
have often heard him talk. He had a soft, musi- 
cal voice, and great power of facial expression. 

One of the most remarkable things I have ever 
observed among monkeys was done by this little 
fellow. On two separate occasions I have seen 
him apologize to Dodo in the most humble man- 



44 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

ner for something he had done, and I tried very- 
hard to secure a record of this particular speech, 
in which I totally failed, as I could not fore- 
know when such an act would be done, and there- 
fore could not have my phonograph in place to 
obtain such a record. I called the attention of Mr. 
F. S. Church, the eminent artist, to this act, with 
the hope that he might be able to make a sketch 
of Nemo while in this attitude. I do not know 
what the offence was, but the pose and expres- 
sion as well as the speech were very impressive. 
He satin a crouching position, with the left hand 
clasping the right wrist, and delivered his speech 
in a most energetic but humble manner. The 
expression on his face could not be misunder- 
stood. After a few moments he paused briefly, 
and then seemed to repeat the same thing some 
two or three times. The manner of his delivery 
was very suggestive, and his demeanor was con- 
ciliatory. When he had quite finished his speech, 
Dodo, to whom the apology was being made, and 
who had listened to it in perfect silence, deliv- 
ered a sound blow with her right hand on the 
left side of the face of the little penitent, to 
which he responded with a soft cry, while Dodo 
turned and left him without further debate. I 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 4$ 

also called the attention of the keeper to this act, 
and he assured me that he had repeatedly wit- 
nessed the same. What the subject of his speech 
was or the cause which brought it about I am 
not able to say, nor can I say with certainty to 
what extent he explained; but that it was an 
apology or explanation of some kind, at least, I 
have not the slightest doubt. I do not believe, 
of course, that his speech contained any details 
concerning the offence ; but that it expressed re- 
gret, penitence, or submission does not, to my 
mind, admit of a doubt. I have seen a few other 
cases somewhat similar to this, but none of them 
comparing, in point of polish and pathos, to that 
of Nemo in his unique little speech. 

Nigger was of this same species; he was in 
poor health most of the winter, being afflicted 
with some spinal trouble; but notwithstanding 
his affliction, he was a good talker. His infirm- 
ity, however, placed him at the mercy of the 
other inmates of the cage, and as monkeys are 
naturally cruel and entirely destitute of sym- 
pathy, the daily life of Nigger could not be ex- 
pected to be a very happy one. Owing to this 
state of facts Nigger usually kept to himself and 
was not intimate with any other monkey in the 



46 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

cage. I have frequently given Nigger some choice 
bits of food while I was in the cage, and protected 
him from the other monkeys while he was eating 
it. This he seemed to fully appreciate, and al- 
ways located himself at a certain point in the 
cage where his defence could be effected with 
the least difficulty. Nigger frequently indulged 
in the most pathetic and touching appeals to his 
keeper, and went through many of the gestures, 
sounds, and contortions which will be described 
in the next chapter as a part of the speech and 
conduct of Dodo, some of whose remarkable 
poses and expressions have been faithfully por- 
trayed by Mr. Church. 

Among my personal friends of the simian 
race there is none more devoted to me than lit- 
tle McGinty, another winter boarder at Central 
Park. From the first of my acquaintance with 
McGinty we have been stanch friends, and when 
I go to visit him he expresses the most un- 
bounded delight. He will reach his little arms 
through the bars of the cage and put his hands 
on my cheeks, hold his mouth up to the wires, 
and talk to me at great length. When I go into 
the cage he will place himself on a perch, 
where he will sit with his arms around my 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 47 

neck, lick my cheeks affectionately, pull my ears, 
and chatter to me in a sweet but plaintive tone. 
When Mickie joins the play, which he invariably 
does, by climbing or jumping on to my shoulders 
and interrupting the tetc-a-tctc between McGinty 
and myself, poor little McGinty 's jealousy, which 
is his supreme passion, causes him to retire in dis- 
gust, and he will sometimes pout for several min- 
utes without even accepting food from me. After 
he has pouted for a while, however, he will some- 
times make overtures of reconciliation and seek 
by various means to divert my attention. One 
of his favorite means of renewing favor with me 
was to whip poor little Nigger. He would look 
at me and laugh, grin and make grimaces, and 
then dash off at Nigger and want to eat him up. 
He did not seem to understand why I objected to 
his whipping Nigger. Monkeys do not regard 
it as a breach of honor to whip the helpless and 
feeble members of their tribe. They are not 
unlike a large per cent of mankind. They al- 
ways hunt for easy prey, and want to fight some- 
thing that is easily whipped. They are not great 
cowards, but when once whipped they rarely 
attempt the second time to contest matters with 
their victors. 



48 The speech of monkeys. 

In this cage, containing five brown Capuchin 
monkeys, it was not difficult to see that Mickie 
ran things to suit himself. McGinty was the 
only one of the four in the cage with him that 
ever contested any right with Mickie, and for a 
long time it was a question in my mind who was 
to win in the end. The next to him in authority 
was Dodo, who never attempted to control Mickie 
or McGinty, but always made Nemo and Nigger 
stand about. Fourth in line of authority was 
Nemo, who always resented any offence from 
others by making Nigger take a corner ; and the 
only victims that Nigger had were the little 
white-faces, which never fight anything and are 
always on the run. When it was finally decided 
between Mickie and McGinty that Mickie should 
be captain, McGinty readily accepted the place 
of first lieutenant, which rank he has continued 
to hold without challenge. When once the 
question is settled among a cage of simians, the 
debate does not appear to be renewed at any 
future time. They never go to court with their 
grievances, and rarely appeal a second time to 
force when the question has once been decided 
against them. Some human beings might profit 
by studying this trait of monkeys. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Dago Talks about the Weather. — Tells me of his Troubles. — 
Dodo in the " Balcony Scene." — Her Portrait by a Great 
Artist. 

On one of my visits to Chicago in the autumn 
of 1890 I went to pay my respects to Dago, the 
little brown monkey in Lincoln Park. He had 
been sick for a while and had not fully recovered, 
although he was able to receive visitors, and his 
appetite for peanuts was fairly well restored. 
On the morning of which I speak, it was dark 
and stormy. A fierce wind and terrible rain 
prevailed from the northwest. I went to the 
building just after daylight, in order to be alone 
with the monkey, and when I entered the house 
Frenchie, the head-keeper, told me how very 
sick little Dago had been since I had left him on 
the day before. I approached the cage and be- 
gan to caress him, to which he replied in low, 
whimpering tones, as though he understood the 
nature of what I was saying to him. Presently 



50 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

he raised himself erect upon his hind feet, and 
placing his hands on his side, pressed and rubbed 
it as though he was in great pain, and uttered 
some sounds in a low, piping voice. The sound 
itself was pathetic, and when accented by his 
gestures it was really very touching. At this 
juncture a hard gust of wind and rain dashed 
against the window near his cage, whereupon 
the little monkey turned away from me, ran to 
the window and looked out, and uttered a sound 
quite different from the ones he had just been 
delivering to me. Still standing erect he ap- 
peared deeply interested, and stood for a few 
moments at the window, during which time he 
would turn his head toward me and utter this 
sound. That the sound he uttered was addressed 
to me could not be doubted, and. his manner in 
doing so was very human-like. Then returning 
to me, still standing erect, he would renew his 
plaintive speech in the most earnest manner, and 
continue it until another gust would call him to 
the window. I observed that each time he went 
to the window he uttered the same sound, as 
well as I could detect by ear, and would stand 
for some time watching out the window, and oc- 
casionally turn his head and repeat this sound to 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 5 I 

me. When returning to me again he would 
resume his sad story, whatever it was. I secured 
a good record of that part of his speech which 
was made when near me at the front of the cage, 
but the remarks made while at the window were 
not so well recorded, yet they were audible, and 
I reproduced them on the phonograph at a sub- 
sequent visit. My opinion was that the sound 
he uttered while at the window must allude in 
some way to the state of the weather, and this 
opinion was confirmed by the fact that on a 
later occasion, when I repeated the record to him 
the weather was fair; but when the machine 
repeated those sounds which he had uttered at 
the window on the' day of the storm, it would 
cause him to turn away and look out the window ; 
while at the other part of the record he evinced 
but little interest, and in fact seemed rather to 
avoid the phonograph, as though the sounds sug- 
gested something which he disliked. I am quite 
sure that the address which he made to me at 
the front of the cage was a complaint of some 
kind, and from its intonation and the manner in 
which it was delivered I believed that it was an 
expression of pain. It occurred to me that the 
state of the weather might have something to do 



52 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

with his feelings, and that he was conscious of 
this fact and desired to inform me of it. 

About a year from that time I became quite 
intimate with a feeble little monkey which is 
described elsewhere by the name of Pedro, and 
of whose speech I made a good record. The 
sounds of his speech so closely resembled those 
made by Dago that I was not able to see that 
they differed in any respect except in loudness. 
Unfortunately the cylinders containing Dago's 
record had been broken in shipping, and I was 
therefore unable to compare the two by analy- 
sis; but the sounds themselves resembled in a 
striking degree, and the manner of delivery was 
not wholly unlike, except that Pedro did not as- 
sume the same pose nor emphasize them with 
the same gestures. 

During my stay in New York the past winter 
I have been frequently entertained by a like 
speech from little Dodo, who was the Juliet of 
the simian tribe. She belonged to the same 
species as the others, but her oratory was of a 
type far superior to that of any other of its kind 
that I have ever heard. At almost any hour of 
the day, at the approach of her keeper, she would 
stand upright and deliver to him the most touch- 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 53 

ing and impassioned address. The sounds which 
she used and the gestures with which she ac- 
cented them, as far as I could determine, were 
the same as those used by Dago and Pedro in 
their remarks to me as above described, except 
that Dodo delivered her lines in a much more 
impressive manner than either of the others. I 
asked the keeper to go into the cage with me, 
and see if he could take her into his hands. 
We entered the cage, and after a little coaxing 
she allowed him to take her into his arms, and 
after caressing her for a while and assuring her 
that no harm was meant, she would put her slen- 
der little arms about his neck and cuddle her 
head up under his chin like an injured child. 
She would caress him by licking his cheeks and 
chattering to him in a voice full of sympathy, 
with an air of affection worthy of a human being. 
During most of this time she would continue her 
pathetic speech without a moment's pause, and 
was not willing under any conditions to be sep- 
arated from him. The only time at which she 
would ever show any anger at me or threaten 
me with assault would be when I would attempt 
to lay hands on her keeper or release him from 
her warm embrace. At such times, however, 



54 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

she would fly at me with great fury and attempt 
to tear my very clothes off, and on these occa- 
sions she would not allow any other inmate of 
the cage to approach him or to receive his atten- 
tion or caresses. The sounds which she uttered 
were pitiful at times, and the tale she told must 
have been full of the deepest woe. I have not 
been able, up to this time, to translate these 
sounds literally ; but their import cannot be mis- 
understood. My belief is that her speech was a 
complaint against the inmates of the cage, and 
that she was begging her keeper not to leave her 
alone in that great iron prison with all those big 
bad monkeys who were so cruel to her. One 
reason for believing this to be the nature of her 
speech is that in all cases where I have heard 
this speech and seen these gestures made, the 
conditions were such as to indicate that such was 
its nature. It has, however, every appearance 
of love-making of the most intense type. It is 
quite impossible to describe fully and accurately 
the sounds, and much more so the gestures, made 
on these occasions, so that the reader would be 
impressed as with the real act and speech. Dodo 
would stand erect on her feet, cross her hands 
on her heart, and in the most touching but 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 55 

graceful manner go through with the most 
indescribable contortions. She would sway her 
body from side to side, turn her hea#l in the most 
coquettish manner, and move her folded hands 
dramatically, while her face would be adorned 
with a simian grin of the first order, and the 
soft, rich notes of her voice were perfectly mu- 
sical. She would bend her body into every grace- 
ful curve that can be imagined, move her feet 
with the grace of the minuet, and continue her 
fervent speech as long as the object of her ado- 
ration appeared to be touched by her appeals. 
Her voice would range from pitch to pitch and 
from key to key, and with her arms folded she 
would glide across the floor of her cage with 
the grace of a ballet-girl ; and I have seen her 
stand with her eyes fixed upon her keeper, and 
hold her face in such a position as not to lose 
sight of him for a moment, and at the same time 
turn her body entirely around in her tracks with 
such skill as no contortionist has ever attained. 
During these orations I have observed the little 
tears standing in the corners of her eyes, which 
indicated that she herself must have felt what 
her speech was intended to convey. These lit- 
tle creatures do not shed tears in such abundance 



56 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

as human beings do ; but they are real tears, and 
are doubtless the result of the same causes that 
move the human eyes to tears. 

It has been my experience that these sounds 
appeal directly to our better feelings. What 
there is in the sound itself I cannot say ; but it 
touches some chord in the human heart which 
vibrates in response to it. It has impressed me 
with the thought that all our senses are like the 
strings of some great harp ; each one having a 
certain tension, so that any sound produced 
through an emotion would find response in that 
chord which is in unison with it. Indeed, I have 
thought that our emotions and sensations may 
be like the diatonic scale in music, and that the 
organs through which they act may respond in 
tones and semi-tones, and that each multiple of 
any fundamental tone will affect the chord in 
unison with it like the strings upon a musical 
instrument. The logical deduction, then, would 
be that our sympathies and affections are the 
chords, and our aversions and contempt the dis- 
cords, of that great harp of passion. 






CHAPTER VII. 

Interpretation of Words. — Specific Words and Signs. — The 
Negative Sign and Sounds. — Affirmative Expressions. — 
Possible Origin of Negative and Positive Signs. 

In my intercourse with these little creatures, 
I cannot forget how often I have caught the 
spirit of their tones when no ray of meaning as 
mere words of speech had dawned upon me, and 
it is partly through such means that I have been 
able to interpret them. As a rule each act of 
a monkey is attended by some sound, and each 
sound by some act, which to another monkey of 
the same species always means a certain thing. 
There are many cases perhaps, in which acquired 
words or shades of dialect are not quite clear to 
them, just as we often find in human speech ; 
but monkeys appear to meet this difficulty and 
overcome it just as men do. They talk with 
one another on a limited number of subjects, but 
in very few words, which they frequently re- 
peat if necessary. Their language is purely 
one of sounds, and while those sounds are ac- 
companied by signs, generally, I think, they are 



58 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

quite able to get along better with the sounds 
alone than with the signs alone. The rules by 
which we may interpret the sounds of simian 
speech are the same as those by which we would 
interpret human speech. If you should be cast 
away upon an island inhabited by some strange 
race of people whose speech was so unlike your 
own that you could not understand a single 
word of it, you would watch the actions of those 
people, and see what act they did in connection 
with any sound they made ; and in this way you 
would gradually learn to associate a certain 
sound with a certain act, until at last you would 
be able to understand the sound without see- 
ing the act at all ; and such is the simple line I 
have pursued in the study of the speech of this 
little race — only I have been compelled to resort 
to some very novel means of doing my part of 
the talking. Since I have been so long associ- 
ated with them, I have learned to know in many 
cases what act they will perform in response to 
certain sounds ; and as I grow more and more 
familiar with these sounds, I become better able 
to distinguish them, just as we do with human 
speech. 

Until recently I have believed that their sounds 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 59 

were so limited in number as to preclude any 
specific terms in their vocabulary ; but now I am 
inclined to modify this opinion somewhat, as I 
have reason to believe that they have some spe- 
cific terms, such as a word for " monkey," another 
word for " fruit, " and so on. They do not specify, 
perhaps, the various kinds of monkeys, but mon- 
keys in general, in contradistinction to birds or 
dogs. Their word for fruit does not specify 
the kind, but only means fruit in a collective 
sense, and only as a kind of food. I am not pos- 
itive as yet that their specific terms may even 
go so far as this ; but I infer that such may be 
the case from one fact which I have observed in 
my experiments. When I show a monkey his 
image in a mirror, he utters a sound on seeing 
it — especially if he has been kept away from other 
monkeys for a long time ; and all monkeys of the 
same species, so far as I have observed, under 
like conditions use the same sound and address 
it in the same way to the image in the glass. In 
a few instances I have seen strange monkeys 
brought in contact with each other, and have ob- 
served that they use this same sound on their 
first meeting. The sound is always uttered in a 
low, soft tone, and appears to have the value of 



60 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

a salutation. When kept in a cage with other 
monkeys they do not appear to salute the image 
in the glass, but chatter to it, and show less sur- 
prise at seeing it than in cases where they have 
been kept alone for some time. 

In cases where monkeys have been fed for a 
long time on bread and milk or on any one kind 
of food, when a banana is shown him he uses a 
sound which the phonograph shows to differ 
slightly from the ordinary food-sound. I have 
recently had reason to suspect that this differ- 
ence of inflection somewhat qualifies the sound, 
and has a tendency to make it more specific. 
The rapidity with which these creatures utter 
their speech is so great that only such ears as 
theirs can detect these very slight inflections. I 
am now directing my observations and experi- 
ments to this end, with the hope that I may be able 
to determine with certainty in what degree they 
qualify their sounds, by inflections or otherwise. 
I have observed that in the phonograph the 
sounds which formerly appeared to me to be the 
same are easily distinguished when treated in 
the manner described in the second part of this 
work, where I have given at length some of my 
experiments with this wonderful machine. 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 6 1 

One of the most certain of my discoveries in 
the simian speech is the negative sign and the 
word "no." The sign is made by shaking the 
head from side to side in a fashion almost ex- 
actly like that used by man to express the same 
idea. I have no longer any doubt of the intent 
and meaning of this sign, and the many tests to 
which I have subjected it compel me to accept 
the result as final. 

A little more than a year ago my attention was 
called to this sign by the children who own the 
little Capuchin, Jack, in Charleston. A number 
of times they said to him, in my presence : " Jack, 
you must go to bed." At which he would shake 
his little black head, as if he really did not wish to 
comply. I watched this with great interest ; but 
it was my belief at that time that he had been 
trained to do this, and that the sign did not 
really signify to him anything at all. The chil- 
dren, however, declared to me that he really 
meant " no." To believe that he meant this would 
presuppose that he understood the combination 
of words quoted, and this was beyond the limits 
of my faith, although it was certain that a repe- 
tition of the sentence always elicited from him 
the same sign, which indicated that he recog- 



62 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

nized it as the same sentence or combination of 
sounds, and gave it the same reply each time. 
I concluded that he had been taught to associate 
this sign with some sound — for instance, " bed" 
or "go;" but since that time I have found the 
sign to be almost universal with this species of 
monkey, and they use the sign to express ne- 
gation. I have seen them use the sign in re- 
sponse to certain things which were wholly new 
to them, but where the idea was clear to them 
and they desired to express dissent. The fact 
that this sign is common to both man and sim- 
ian I regard as more than a mere coincidence, 
and I believe that in this sign I have found the 
psycho-physical basis of expression. 

I have made scores of experiments on this 
subject, and I find this sign a fixed factor of ex- 
pression. In one case where I tried to induce a 
monkey to allow me to take him into my hands 
from the hand of his master, he would shake his 
head each time, and make a peculiar sound some- 
what like a suppressed cluck. I would try to 
coax him with nuts, in response to which he 
would make the same sound and sign each time, 
and his actions showed beyond all controversy 
his intention. I had taught a monkey to drink 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 63 

milk from a bottle by sucking it through a rub- 
ber nipple, and after he had satisfied his thirst, 
when I would try to force the bottle to his lips 
he would invariably respond by a shake of the 
head in the manner described, and at the same 
time utter a clucking sound. I tried many sim- 
ilar experiments with three or four other mon- 
keys, and secured the same result in each case. 
In another instance, where a monkey was con- 
fined in a small cage, so that I could easily catch 
him in order to tame him by handling, when I 
would put my hand into the cage to catch him 
he would shake his head in this manner and ac- 
company the act by a plaintive sound, which was 
so touching that I could not obtain my own con- 
sent to persecute the little prisoner by compelling 
him to submit to my caresses. I have found that 
the little rogue McGinty, in Central Park, does 
the same thing at times when I go into the cage 
and attempt to put ni3 r hands on him, and espe- 
cially when he has taken refuge in a corner to 
nurse his jealousy. While I remain outside the 
cage he is so devoted to me that he will scarcely 
leave me to get something to eat ; but when I 
enter the cage and reach out my hand toward 
him. he will shake his little head and utter that 



C>4 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

peculiar clucking sound. Many of these tests 
I have repeated over and over with the same re- 
sults, and noting the conditions at the time, I am 
thoroughly convinced that the sign and sound 
mean "no." I have observed that this sign is 
always made in the same manner ; but sometimes 
it is accompanied by a clucking sound, while at 
other times it is a soft, whimpering sound, al- 
most like a low, plaintive whistle. The sign is 
frequently used without the sound at all ; and I 
must impress it upon my reader that these re- 
sults do not always present themselves in every 
experiment, as much depends upon the mood 
and surroundings of the subject. I have found 
that one advantage is to have the monkey con- 
fined in a very small cage, as otherwise he will 
turn away and get out of your reach when you 
press anything upon him that he does not want. 
I have also found much better results by having 
the monkey alone, and where he can neither see 
nor hear other monkeys. 

Having discovered the sign of negation among 
the simians, I began an investigation to ascer- 
tain how far it could be found among the races 
of mankind. I have carried my search far be- 
yond the limits of local inquiry, and up to this 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 65 

time I have found only a few trifling exceptions 
in the use of this sign among all the races of 
men, and those few exceptions are found among 
the Caucasian race, and appear to be confined to 
Southern Europe. I have heard that among 
certain island tribes of Polynesia these signs are 
reversed ; but I have been assured by two officers 
of the English navy and two of the United States 
navy, who have visited the islands in question, 
that such is not the case. Among the Indians, 
Mongolians, and Negroes I have found no note- 
worthy exceptions. I have inquired among 
mothers who have raised families to ascertain 
where they first observed this sign as an expres- 
sion among their children ; and from the con- 
sensus of opinion it appears that this is about 
the first sign used by infants to express nega- 
tion. 

I have not found the positive sign, or sign of 
affirmation by a nod of the head, to be so general ; 
yet it has a wide range within the human family, 
and appears to be used to some extent among the 
lower primates. 

Seeking a source from which these signs may 
have originated, I have concluded that they may 
arise from two circumstances: The negative 



66 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

sign, doubtless, comes from an effort to turn the 
head away from something which is not desired, 
and that, with such an intent, it has gradually 
crystallized into an instinctive expression of nega- 
tion or refusal ; while the nod of affirmation or 
approval may have grown out of the intuitive 
lowering of the head as an act of submission or 
acquiescence, or from reaching the head forward 
to receive something desired, or it may have 
come from these two causes conjointly. 

This is only one of a great many points in 
which the speech of simians coincides with that 
of man. It is true we have no letters in our 
alphabet with which to represent the sounds of 
their speech, nor have we the phonetic equiva- 
lence of their speech in our language ; but it is 
also true that our alphabet does not fully repre- 
sent or correctly express the entire phonetic 
range of our own speech ; but the fact that our 
speech is not founded upon the same phonetic 
basis, or built up into the same phonetic struct- 
ures, is no reason that their speech is not as truly 
speech as our own. That there are no letters 
in any alphabet which represent the phonetic 
elements of simian speech is doubtless due to 
the fact that there has never been any demand 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 67 

for such; but the same genius that invented 
an alphabet for human speech, actuated by the 
same motives and led by the same incentives, 
could as easily invent an alphabet for simian 
speech. It is not only true that the phonetic ele- 
ments of our language are not represented by 
the characters of our alphabet, but the same is 
true to some extent of our words which do not 
quite keep pace with human thought. In the 
higher types of human speech there are thou- 
sands of words and ideas which cannot be trans- 
lated into or expressed by any savage tongue, 
because no savage ever had use for them and no 
savage tongue contains their equivalence. The 
growth of speech is always measured by the 
growth of mind. They are not always of the 
same extent, but always bear a common ratio. 
It is a mental product, and must be equal to the 
task of coining thoughts into words. It is essen- 
tial to all social order, and no community could 
long survive as such without it. It is as much 
the product of mind and matter as salt is the 
product of chlorine and sodium. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Meeting with Nellie. — Nellie was my Guest. — Her Speech and 
Manners —The Little Blind Girl.— One of Nellie's 
Friends. —Her Sight and Hearing. —Her Toys and how she 
Played with them. 

ONE of the most intelligent of all the brown 
Capuchins that I have ever seen was Nellie, who 
belonged to a dealer in Washington. When she 
arrived there I was invited to call and see her. 
I introduced myself in my usual way, by giving 
her the sound for food, to which she promptly 
replied. She was rather informal, and we were 
soon engaged in a chat on that subject — the one 
above all others that would interest a monkey. 
On my second visit she was like an old acquaint- 
ance, and we had a fine time. On my third visit 
she allowed me to put my hands into her cage 
and handle her with impunity. On my next 
visit I took her out of the cage and we had a real 
romp. This continued for some days, during 
which time she would answer me on all occasions 
when I used the word for food or drink. She 
had grown quite fond of me, and always recog- 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS- 69 

nized me as I entered the door. About this time 
there came to Washington a little girl who was 
deaf, dumb, and blind. She was accompanied 
by her teacher, who acted as her interpreter. 
One of the greatest desires of this little girl's life 
was to see a live monkey — that is, to see it with 
her fingers. The dealer who owned the monkey 
sent for me to come down and show it to her, as 
I could handle the monkey for her. I took Nel- 
lie from the cage, and when any one except my- 
self would put hands upon her she would growl 
and scold and show her temper; and when the 
little blind girl first attempted to put her hands 
on her, Nellie did not like it at all. I stroked the 
child's hair and cheeks with my own hand first, 
and then with Nellie's. She looked up at me in 
an inquiring manner, and uttered one of those 
soft, flute-like sounds a few times, and then be- 
gan to pull at the cheeks and ears of the child. 
Within a few moments they were like old friends 
and playmates, and for nearly an hour they 
afforded, each other great pleasure, at the end of 
which time they separated with reluctance. The 
•little simian acted as if she was conscious of 
the sad affliction of the child, but seemed at per- 
fect ease with her, although she would decline 



yo THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

the tenderest approach of others. She would 
look at the child's eyes, which were not disfig- 
ured, but lacked expression, and then at me, 
as if to indicate that she was aware that the 
child was blind, and the little girl appeared not 
to be aware that monkeys could bite at all. It 
was a beautiful and touching scene, and one in 
which the lamp of instinct shed its feeble light 
on all around. 

On the following day, by an accident in which 
I really had no part except that of being present, 
Nellie escaped from her cage and climbed up on 
a shelf occupied by some bird-cages. As she 
attempted to climb up, of course the light wicker 
cages, with their little yellow occupants, fell to 
the floor by the dozen. I tried to induce her to 
return or to come to me ; but the falling cages, 
the cry of the birds, the talking of parrots, and 
the scream of other monkeys frightened poor 
Nellie almost out of her wits. Thinking that I 
was the cause of her trouble, because I was pres- 
ent, she would scream with fright at my ap- 
proach. She was not an exception to the gen- 
eral rule that governs monkey dom, which is to 
suspect every one of doing wrong except itself. 

I had her removed to my apartments, where I 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 7 1 

supplied her with bells and toys and fed her on 
the fat of the land ; and by this means we slowly 
knitted together the broken bones of our friend- 
ship once more. But when once a monkey has 
grown suspicious of you they never recover en- 
tirely from it, it seems, for in every act there- 
after, however slight, you can readily see that 
they suspect you of it ; but with great care and 
caution you can make them almost forget the 
trouble. 

While I kept Nellie at my rooms I made some 
good records of her speech on the phonograph, 
and studied her with special care ; but as the prov- 
ince of this work is the speech of that little race, 
I must forego- the pleasure of telling some in- 
tensely funny things with which she entertained 
me, except in so far as they are relevant to speech. 

A frequent and welcome visitor to my study 
was a bright little boy about six years old, for 
whom Nellie entertained a great fondness, as she 
also did for my wife. At the sight of the boy 
Nellie would go into perfect raptures, and when 
he would leave her she would call him so ear- 
nestly and whine so pitifully that one could not 
refrain from sympathy. On his return she 
would laugh audibly and give every sign of ex- 



72 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

treme joy. She never tired of his company, nor 
gave any part of her attention to others when he 
was present. Some children living next door 
to me found great delight in calling to see Nel- 
lie, and she always evinced great pleasure at their 
visits. On these occasions Nellie made it a 
point to entertain them, and showed herself to 
the best advantage. When I wished to make a 
good record of her sounds, and especially of her 
laughter, I would always bring the little boy to 
my aid. The boy would conceal himself in the 
room, and after Nellie would call him a few 
times he would jump out from his place of con- 
cealment and surprise her, whereupon she would 
laugh till she could be heard through the whole 
house ; and in this manner I secured some of the 
best records I have ever made of the laughter of 
a monkey. Then when the boy would conceal 
himself again, I secured the peculiar sound 
with which she would try to attract his attention. 
The sound which she used in calling him or my 
wife was unlike that which she made for any 
other purpose; and while it is difficult to say 
whether the grammatical value of this sound is 
that of a noun or of a verb, it is evident that it 
was used for the special purpose of calling or 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 73 

attracting attention. If its value is that of a 
noun, it has not in my opinion any specific char- 
acter, but a term which would be applied alike 
to boys, monkeys, horses, birds, or any other 
thing which she might desire to call. If in its 
nature it is a verb, it is equivalent to the name 
of the act and combines the force of the imper- 
ative and infinitive moods. 

The uniform expression of the emotions of man 
and simian is such as to suggest that if thought 
was developed from emotion and speech was 
developed from thought, the expressions of emo- 
tion were the rudiments from which speech is 
developed. 

A striking point of resemblance between hu- 
man speech and that of the simian is found in 
a word which Nellie used to warn me of approach- 
ing danger. It is not that sound which I have 
elsewhere described as the alarm-sound, and 
which is used only in case of imminent and 
awful danger, but a sound used in case of re- 
mote danger or in announcing something un- 
usual. As nearly as I can represent the. sound 
by letters it would be "e-c-g-k," and with this 
word I have been warned by these little friends 
many times since I first heard it from Nellie, 



74 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

In the following experiment this sound was 
used with great effect. Nellie's cage occupied 
a place in my study near my desk. She would 
stay awake at night as long as the light was kept 
burning, and as I have always kept late hours, 
I did not violate the rule of my life in order to 
give her a good night's rest. About two o'clock 
one morning, when I was about to retire, I found 
Nellie wide awake. I drew my chair up to her 
cage, and sat watching her pranks as she tried 
to entertain me with bells and toys. I tied a 
long thread to a glove, which I placed in the 
corner of the room at a distance of several feet 
from me, but without letting her see it. I held 
one end of the string in my hand and drew the 
glove obliquely across the floor toward the cage. 
When I first tightened the string, which I had 
drawn across one knee and under the other, the 
glove moved very slightly, and this her quick 
eye caught at the first motion. Standing almost \ 
on tip-toe, her mouth half-open, she w r ould peep 
cautiously at the glove, and then in a low whis- 
per would say "e-c-g-k!" and every second or 
so would repeat it, at the same time watching 
me to see whether I was aware of the approach 
of this goblin. Her actions were almost human, 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 75 

while her movements were as stealthy as those 
of a cat. As the glove came closer and closer 
she became more and more demonstrative, and 
when at last she saw the monster climbing up 
the leg of my trousers she uttered the sound 
aloud and very rapidly, and tried to get to the 
object, which she evidently thought was some 
living thing. She detected the thread with 
which I drew the glove across the floor, but 
seemed in doubt as to what part it played in this 
act. I saw her eyes several times follow the 
thread from my knee to the glove, but I do not 
think she discovered what caused the glove to 
move. Having done this for a few times, how- 
ever, with about the same result each time, I re- 
lieved her anxiety and fright by allowing her 
to examine the glove, which she did with marked 
interest for a moment, and then turned away. I 
tried the same thing over again, but failed to 
elicit from her the slightest interest after she had . 
examined the glove. 

It will be observed that when Nellie first 
discovered the glove moving on the floor she 
attempted to call my attention in a low whis- 
per; that as the object approached me she be- 
came more earnest, uttered the sound somewhat 



76 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

louder, and when she discovered the monster, as 
she regarded it, climbing up my leg she uttered 
her warning in a loud voice — not a scream or a 
yell, but in a tone sufficiently loud for the dis- 
tance over which the warning was conveyed. 
The fact of her whispering indicates that her 
idea of sound was well defined. Her purpose 
was to warn me of the approaching danger with- 
out alarming the object against which her warn- 
ing was intended to prepare me, and as the dan- 
ger approached me her warning became more 
urgent, and when she saw the danger was at 
hand, her warning was no longer concealed or 
restrained. 

Another sound which these little creatures use 
in a somewhat similar manner is a word which 
may be represented by the letters "c-h-i." The 
"ch" is guttural, like the final "ch" in German, 
and " i" short, like the sound of i in " hit." This 
sound is used to give warning of the approach of 
something which the monkey does not fear, 
such as approaching footsteps or the sound of 
voices, and Nellie always used this sound to 
warn my wife of my approach when I was com- 
ing up the stairway. The rooms which I occu- 
pied while I kept Nellie were located on the sec- 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 77 

ond floor, and the dining-room was on the ground- 
floor, and hence there were two flights of stairs 
between, both of which were carpeted. So acute 
was her sense of hearing that she would detect 
my footsteps on the lower stairway and warn my 
wife of my approach. She manifested no inter- 
est, as a rule, in the sounds made by other per- 
sons passing up and down the stairway, which 
indicated that she not only heard the sounds of 
my footsteps, but recognized them. The first 
intimation she would give of my coming was 
always in a whisper. She would first make 
the sound " c-h-i " and then stop and listen. 
She would repeat the sound and listen again; 
as I approached the door in the hall she would 
lift her voice to its natural pitch and utter 
this sound three or four times in quick suc- 
cession ; when I turned the door-knob she would 
show some excitement, and when I entered 
the room she would always express her satis- 
faction with a little chuckle. This sound she 
did not use except to announce something of 
which she was not afraid,, but when she ap- 
prehended danger from the cause of the sound 
she would use the word " e-c-g-k," and when 
greatly alarmed she would use the sound which 



78 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

I have described elsewhere as that of intense 
alarm or assault. 

Nellie was an affectionate little creature, and 
could not bear to be left alone even when sup- 
plied with toys and everything she wanted to 
eat. When she saw me put on my overcoat or 
get my hat and cane she knew what it meant, 
and when she saw my wife, to whom she was 
much devoted, put on her cloak and bonnet 
she at once foresaw that she would be left 
alone. Then she would plead and beg and 
chatter until she would sometimes dissuade my 
wife, and she seemed aware that she had ac- 
complished her purpose. I have watched her by 
the hour through a small hole in the door, and 
when quite alone, she would play with her toys 
in perfect silence, and sometimes for hours to- 
gether she would not utter a single word. She 
was not an exception to the rule which I have 
mentioned heretofore, that monkeys do not talk 
when alone or when it is not necessary to their 
comfort or pleasure , and while I am aware that 
their speech is far inferior to human speech, yet 
in it there is an eloquence that soothes and a 
meaning that appeals to the human heart. 






CHAPTER IX. 

Nellie's Affections.— A Little Flirtation.— Some of my Per- 
sonal Friends. 

Nellie had spent much of her life in captiv- 
ity, and had been used to the society of children, 
for whom she showed the greatest fondness. She 
rarely ever betrayed the slightest aversion to any 
of them. She delighted to pat their cheeks, pull 
their ears, and tangle their hair. One of her 
favorite pastimes was to pull the hairpins out of 
my wife's hair so that she could get hold of it 
the better to play with it, and my wife has often 
remarked that Nellie would make an excellent 
lady's maid. She would clean one's finger-nails 
with the skill of a manicure. She would pick 
every shred, ravelling, or speck from one's cloth- 
ing. Her aversions and her attachments were 
equally strong. She was not selfish in selecting 
her friends, nor did she seem to be influenced by 
age or beauty. 

To let her out of her cage and give her some- 
thing to play with was happiness enough for her, 



8o THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

and I almost think she preferred such a life to 
the freedom of her Amazon forests. But you 
cannot afford to turn one out of the cage in 
a room where there is anything that can be torn 
or broken, as they enjoy such mischief in the 
highest degree. Nellie would beg me so pite- 
ously to be taken from her little iron prison that 
I could not have the cruelty to refuse her, even 
at the cost of some trouble in preparing the 
room for her: and as we retain these little cap- 
tives against their will and treat them worse 
than slaves by keeping them in close confinement, 
I think we should at least try to amuse them. It 
is true they do not have to toil, but I think it 
would be more humane to make them work in the 
open air than to confine them so closely and then 
deprive them of every source of pleasure. As 
an act of humanity and simple justice, I would 
impress upon those who have such little pets 
how important a thing it is to keep them sup- 
plied with toys. They are just like children in 
this respect, and for a trifle one can furnish 
them with all the toys they need. It is cruel, 
absolutely cruel, to keep these little creatures 
confined in solitude and deny them the simple 
pleasure they find in playing with a bell, ball, or 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 8 1 

marbles, and besides, a trifling outlay in this 
way will very much prolong their lives. A mon- 
key is always happy if he has something to play 
with and plenty to eat. I do not know of any 
investment of mine which ever yielded such a 
great return in pleasure as one little pocket match - 
safe, which cost me twenty-five cents and which 
I gave to Nellie one evening to play with. I 
had put into it a small key to make it rattle, and 
also some bits of candy. She rattled the box, 
and found some pleasure in the noise it made. 
I showed her a few times how to press the spring 
in order to open it, but her little black fingers 
were not strong enough to release the spring 
and make the lid fly open. However, she 
caught the idea, and knew that the spring was 
the secret which held it , and when she found 
that she could not open it with her fingers, she 
tried it with her teeth. Failing in this she 
turned to the wall, and standing upright on the 
top of her cage, she took the box in both hands 
and struck the spring against the wall until the 
lid flew open. She was perfectly delighted at 
the result, and for the hundredth time at least 
I closed the box for her to open again. On the 

following day, when some friends came in to 
6 



82 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

visit her, I gave her the match-box to open again. 
On this occasion, however, she was in her cage, 
and could not reach the wall through its meshes, 
and hence had nothing against which to strike 
the spring to force it open. After looking 
around her in all directions and striking the box 
against the wires of her cage a few times, she 
discovered a block of wood about six inches in 
length and breadth by an inch thick ; this she took 
and mounted her perch. Balancing the block on 
the perch, she held it with the left foot while 
with her right foot she held on to the perch, and 
with her tail wound through the meshes of her 
cage to steady herself, she carefully adjusted the 
match-box in her hands in such a manner as to 
protect her fingers from the blow. Then strik- 
ing the spring against the block of wood the lid 
flew open, and she fairly screamed with delight 
and held the box up with pride, wanting me 
to close the lid again, in order that she might 
open it. 

Finding that the late hours which I kept were 
beginning to tell on Nellie, and that during the 
day from time to time I would catch her taking 
a little nap, I concluded to use some curtains 
around her cage to avoid disturbing her rest. I 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 83 

drew them around the cage, lapped them over, 
and pinned them down in front. Then I turned 
down the light and kept quiet for a while to al- 
low her to go to sleep. After the lapse of a few 
minutes I slowly turned up the light and re- 
sumed my writing. In an intstant I heard the 
curtains rustle and looked around, and there I 
saw her little brown eyes peeping through the 
folds of the curtains, which she held apart with 
her little black hands. When she saw what it 
was that caused all this disturbance she chattered 
to me in her soft, rich tones, and tried so hard to 
pull the curtains apart that I removed them from 
her cage, so that she could look around the room. 
To see her holding the curtains apart in that 
graceful manner, turning her head from side to 
side, peeping and smiling at me and talking in 
such low tones, was so much like a real flirtation 
that one who has not seen the like cannot fully 
appreciate it. And only those who have experi- 
enced the warm and unselfish friendship of these 
little creatures can realize how strong the attach- 
ment becomes. When once you enjoy the con- 
fidence of a monkey nothing can shake it ex- 
cept some act of your own or one at least which 
they attribute to you. Their little ears are 



84 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

proof against gossip and their tongues are free 
from it. 

Among the little captives of the simian race 
who spend their life in iron prisons to gratify 
the cruelty of man, and not to expiate some 
crime committed or inherent, I have many little 
friends to whom I am attached, and whose de- 
votion to me is as warm and sincere, so far as I 
can see, as that of any human being. I must 
confess that I cannot discern in what intrinsic 
way the love they have for me differs from my 
own for them. I cannot see in what respect 
their love is less divine than is my own. I can- 
not see in what respect the affections of a dog 
for a kind master differ from those of a child for 
a kind parent ; nor can I see in what respect the 
sense of fear for a cruel master differs from that 
of a child for a cruel parent. It is mere senti- 
ment that ascribes to those of a child a higher 
source than the same passions in the dog ; the 
dog could have loved or feared another master 
just as well ; and filial love or fear would have 
reached out its tendrils just as far with all the 
ties of kindred blood removed. It has been said 
that one is able to assign a definite reason why 
and that the other is a vague impulse ; but I am 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 85 

too obtuse to understand how reason actuates 
to love and instinct to a mere attachment. I 
cannot believe that in the essential and ultimate 
nature of these passions there can be shown any 
real difference. Whether it be reason or instinct 
in man, the affections of the lower animals are 
actuated by the same motives, governed by the 
same conditions, and guided by the same reasons 
as those of man. I shall not soon forget some 
of my monkey friends, and I am sure they will 
not forget me; for I see them sometimes after 
months of absence, and they usually recognize 
me at sight and show every sign of pleasure at 
my return. 



CHAPTER X. 

The Capuchin Vocabulary.— What I Have Found.— What I 
Foresee in it. 

Up to this time I have been able to determine, 
with a fair degree of certainty, nine words or 
sounds belonging to Capuchins, some of which 
sounds are so inflected as to have two or three 
different meanings, I think. The sound which 
I have translated food, and found to have a much 
wider meaning, long perplexed me, because I 
found it used under so many conditions, and had 
not been able to detect any difference of mod- 
ulation. I find one form of this sound used for 
food in general, but when modulated in a certain 
way seems to specify the kind of food. I ob- 
served that this sound seemed to be a salutation 
or peace-making term with them, which I attrib- 
uted to the fact that food was the central thought 
of every monkey's life, and that consequently 
that word would naturally be the most important 
of his whole speech. During the past winter 

I found that another modulation of this word ex- 
86 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 87 

pressed a wish to obtain a thing, and appeared 
to me to be almost equivalent to the verb " give," 
when used in the imperative mood ; something 
like this: "Give me that." I have succeeded a 
great number of times, by the use of this word, 
in inducing McGinty to give me a part of his 
food, and on many occasions to hand me from 
his cage a ball, a club, or some such thing that 
I had given him to play with. Under suitable 
conditions I could soon determine to what ex- 
tent these inflections control their actions, but 
with the surroundings of a zoological garden the 
task is very difficult. However, I am quite sat- 
isfied that the sound which I have translated food 
is shaded by them into several kindred meanings. 

The word " drink" appears to be Tnore fixed, 
both in its form and meaning. I have not yet 
been able to detect any difference in the sound 
whether water, milk, or other liquids be desired ; 
but this is quite natural, since they have but lit- 
tle variety in the things they drink. 

I am not sure how far the sound which I had 
thought meant "weather," or in some way allud- 
ed to the state of the weather, may be relied 
upon as a separate word. It was so closely 
connected to the speech of discontent or pain 



88 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

when made by little Dago that I have not been 
able since to separate the sounds, and I finally 
abandoned it as a separate word ; but reviewing 
my work, and recalling the peculiar conduct of 
this monkey and the conditions attending it, I 
believe it is safe to say that he had in mind the 
state of the weather. 

The sound which I have translated "love" is 
only in the sense of firm and ardent friendship. 
The expressions of love between sexes I have 
not been able, as yet, to find with certainty. A 
few sounds, however, made under certain con- 
ditions I have reason to believe bear upon this 
subject ; but I am not yet ready to announce my 
opinions thereon. 

The "alarm" sound, as I have translated it, 
has been described; but among the Capuchins 
I find three kindred words, quite unlike as mere 
sounds, but closely allied in meaning. The one 
just mentioned is used under the stress of great 
fear or in case of assault. It is a shrill, piercing 
sound, very loud and very high in pitch. The 
second word, " e-c-g-k," is used only to express 
apprehension or as a warning of the approach of 
a thing they fear or do not like, and the last of 
these, which is a guttural whisper, is used merely 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 89 

to call attention to the approach of something 
which the monkey does not fear or dislike, 
which I have spelled "c-h-i." 

I have referred elsewhere, without describing- 
it, to the sound which Nellie used for calling, 
and which she employed when attempting to dis- 
suade my wife from going out and leaving her 
alone. It is a peculiar sound, something like a 
whine, but very plaintive and suggestive. I 
cannot represent it in letters. 

There are many sounds about which I am yet 
in doubt, and some shades of meaning are not 
clear; but these sounds described include the 
greater part of my knowledge of the Capuchin 
tongue, and I shall now proceed to the sounds of 
some of the other monkeys. 

Standing on this frail bridge of speech, I see 
into that broad field of life and thought which 
lies beyond the confines of our care, and into 
which, through the gates that I have now un- 
locked, may soon be borne the sunshine of human 
intellect. What prophet now can foretell the re- 
lations which may yet obtain between the human 
race and those inferior forms which fill some 
place in the design and execute some function 
in the economy of nature? 



go THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

A knowledge of their language cannot injure 
man, and may conduce to the good of others, be- 
cause it would lessen man's selfishness, widen 
his mercy, and restrain his cruelty. It would 
not place man more remote from his divinity nor 
change the state of facts which now exist. Their 
speech is the only gateway to their minds, and 
through it we must pass if we would learn their 
secret thoughts and measure the distance from 
mind to mind. 



CHAPTER XI. 

The Word for Food in the Rhesus Dialect.— The Rhesus 
Sound of Alarm.— The Dialect of the White- Face. — Dolly 
Varden, Uncle Remus and others. 

From a number of sounds uttered by the 
Rhesus monkeys, I finally selected the word 
which, for many reasons, I believed meant food, 
and was the equivalent in meaning to that word 
in the Capuchin tongue. The phonetic character 
of the words differs very widely. The sound ut- 
tered by the Rhesus, as nearly as I can represent 
it by letters, is "nqu-u-w." The "u" sound is 
about the same as in the Capuchin word, but on 
close examination with the phonograph, it ap- 
pears to be uttered in five syllables very slightly 
separated, while the ear only detects two. 

One of the most unique of my experiments I 
made in Central Park in the autumn of 189 1. I 
secured a very fine phonograph record of the 
food-sound of the Rhesus monkeys belonging to 
the park. During the following night there ar- 
rived at the park a shipment of Rhesus monkeys 



92 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

just from their home in the east of Asia. There 
were seven of these new monkeys, three adult 
females and four babies, one of whom was left 
an orphan by the death of its mother in her pas- 
sage across the ocean. At my request the super- 
intendent had these monkeys stored in the vacant 
room in the upper story of the old armory build- 
ing. They had never seen the monkeys in Cen- 
tral Park, nor had they ever been brought near 
enough to the monkey-house for them to learn 
by any means that any other monkeys were 
there. About sunrise I repaired to this room, 
where I had my phonograph placed in order, and 
I enjoined those who were present by special 
permission not to do anything to attract the at- 
tention of the monkeys, nor under any condition to 
show them any food or anything to drink. Hav- 
ing arranged my phonograph, I delivered to 
them the sounds contained on my cylinder which 
I had recorded on the day preceding. Up to 
this time not a sound had been uttered by any 
inmate of the shipping-cage. The instant my 
phonograph began to reproduce the record, the 
seven new monkeys began to answer .vociferously. 
After having delivered this record to them, I 
gave them time to become quiet again. I showed 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 93 

them some carrots and apples, on seeing which 
they began to utter the same sounds which they 
had uttered before, and this time I secured a 
good record of their sounds to compare with the 
others. 

The alarm-sound as given by the Rhesus is 
very energetic, but not so shrill nor sharp as that 
of the Capuchin, nor have I discovered more 
than one such sound. As they are not of a high 
order of intelligence, nor kindly disposed unless 
kept in fear, I have not given them a great 
amount of study, but their sounds come more 
closely to the range of the human voice than do 
the sounds of the Cebus, which I regard as the 
Caucasian of monkeys. 

The Rhesus is not very intelligent, but when 
reared in captivity appears to be capable of some 
degree of domestication. The adult reared in a 
wild state shows many phases of vicious and un- 
congenial temper. When well cared for they are 
rather hardy and undergo training quite well. 
They are not a handsome animal, being of a 
faded tan color on the back, merged into a yel- 
lowish-white on the less exposed parts. They 
have large cheek-pouches, which, when not filled 
with food, allow the skin on the neck and jaws 



94 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

to hang in folds, which give them an appearance 
of extreme emaciation, and when full of food 
they are so distended as to present rather an un- 
pleasant aspect. 

The sounds which the Rhesus utters in anger 
are harsh and unmusical, while their sound for 
food is soft and sympathetic, and I have made a 
machine which imitates it quite well. The Rhe- 
sus belongs to the genus Macacus, one of the 
oldest and largest of all simian genera. 

I have found the word in the dialect of the 
white-faced Cebus which corresponds in value 
to those sounds described in the dialects of the 
Capuchin and Rhesus monkeys meaning food; 
but I cannot give the faintest idea of the sound 
by any combination of letters, nor have I as yet 
devised any means by which I can imitate it. I 
recorded this sound on the phonograph more 
than a year ago, but only within the last few 
months have I been able to tell its meaning. 

Another sound which is made by this species 
to express apprehension of remote danger, such 
as an approaching footstep or some unusual 
sound, I have also learned. It is very much 
the same phonetically as that sound which he 
utters in case of grreat and sudden alarm, but 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 95 

with much less energy. It resembles slightly 
the alarm-sound of the Capuchin, but up to this 
time I have not been able to make a good record 
of it. 

Another sound which is peculiar to this species, 
I think, is used as a kind of salutation or expres- 
sion of friendship, which phonetically is quite 
unlike the corresponding sound in any other dia- 
lect that I have studied. 

I must mention Dolly Varden, who belongs to 
this species and with whom I was at one time 
on very warm terms of friendship. Dolly was 
very fond of me and would laugh and play with 
me by the hour. Her laughter was very human- 
like, except that it was silent, and in all our play 
during the lapse of some weeks she never ut- 
tered a sound — not even so much as a growl, al- 
though I tried by every possible means to in- 
duce her to talk. It has occurred to me since 
that time that she may have been deaf and dumb, 
but I did not think of testing her on these points 
while I had an opportunity. It is not usual for 
monkeys to laugh in silence, although they fre- 
quently laugh aloud like human beings ; but it is 
not a common thing for them to remain silent at 
all times and under all conditions. Dolly was 



g6 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

good-natured, playful, and always showed every 
sign of pleasure at my visits. 

In Central Park there is a monkey of this spe- 
cies which I call Uncle Remus. He is quite 
fond of me, and for my amusement he always 
wants to whip a little baby-monkey in the same 
cage with him whenever I go to visit them. 
This species belongs to the same genus as the 
Capuchin, though they differ in mental calibre as 
widely as the Caucasian differs from the negro; 
but in this case the colors are reversed. I have 
seen a few fairly intelligent white-faces and a 
great many very stupid Capuchins ; but to strike 
an average from a great number of each kind, 
they will be found very widely separated in 
brain-power. 

The white-faced Cebus always has a languid 
expression, and looks like some poor, decrepit old 
man who has borne a great burden of care 
through a long life, and finds his toil and pa- 
tience ill-requited and is now awaiting his last 
call. He always has a sad face and looks as if 
his friends were false. His type of speech is 
very far inferior to that of the Capuchin, and I 
do not regard him as a good subject for my work. 

I have learned the food-sound in the dialect 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 97 

of the sooty Mangaby, but I have not been able 
to record it sufficiently well to study. It is 
one of the most peculiar sounds in the whole 
range of simian speech. The phonetic elements 
are nearly like " wuh-uh-uh," but the manner in 
which it is delivered is very singular. It appears 
to be intermixed with a peculiar clucking sound, 
and each sound seems independent of the other, 
although so closely joined in their utterance as 
to sound almost like they were uttered simul- 
taneously by separate means. It is a deep gut- 
tural below the middle pitch of the human voice, 
while the clucking element appears much higher 
in pitch, and the whole sound is marked with a 
strong tremolo effect. The syllables are uttered 
in rapid succession, and this peculiar sound un- 
der different conditions is uttered in at least 
three different degrees of pitch at least an oc- 
tave apart; but the contour appears to me the 
same in each. This species talks but little, is 
very shy, makes few friends, and is afraid of the 
phonograph; hence I have never been able to 
make a good record of its voice. I was cultivat- 
ing the friendship of Jim, who recently died in 
Central Park, and we were getting on the best 
of terms; but the little Mangaby that survives 
7 



98 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

him is very shy and suspicious. Immediately 
after Jim's death, however, when I would visit 
the garden, she would always jump on the perch 
and take the same position that Jim had occupied 
whenever I would feed him. During his life- 
time she always kept her distance, and never 
would take anything out of my hand, because 
she was afraid of him but as soon as he was out 
of the way she assumed his place and would ut- 
ter the same sound that he had uttered at my 
approach. She evidently was aware of the fact 
that Jim and I were friends, that I always gave 
him something good to eat at that particular 
place in the cage, and that he always sat in a 
certain position when I gave it to him. I do not 
regard this species as very intelligent nor their 
language as being of a high type ; but they have 
a very human-like face, almost without hair, and 
very large and expressive eyes. They abound 
in West Africa, and have been colonized with 
success in the Island of Mauritius ; they are not 
very common in captivity, but. much more so 
than some other species of less interest. 



CHAPTER XII. 

Attelles or Spider-Monkeys — The Common Macaque. — Java 
Monkeys and what They Say.— A Happy Family. 

I have caught one sound from the spider-mon- 
key by which I have been able to attract the at- 
tention of others of the same species, though I am 
as yet uncertain about its meaning. I do not 
believe that it has any reference to food, but I 
think perhaps it is a term of friendship or a 
sound of endearment. One reason for this belief 
is that I have heard it used on several occasions 
when a monkey of this kind would see its image 
in a mirror. I have used the sound in Washing- 
ton, Philadelphia, and Atlanta, and induced the 
monkey addressed to respond to it and come to 
me. I almost concluded at one time that this 
species was nearly dumb, until I saw one enraged 
by a green monkey that occupied an adjoining 
cage. On this occasion she raised her voice to 
an extremely high pitch, and uttered a sound 
having great volume and significance. This she 
repeated several times, and it was the first time 
99 



100 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

I had ever seen a spider-monkey show any sign 
of resentment. On another occasion, when this 
same specimen saw a brilliant peacock near the 
window by her cage, the sounds which she made 
at that strange object were loud, clear, and varied. 

I have read with surprise an account of a spider- 
monkey which Dr. Gardner had with him in his 
travels through South America. He describes 
it as the most intelligent of all monkeys, but I 
cannot believe that his experience with monkeys 
is sufficient to rank him as an authority on that 
subject. I do not pretend, however, to know all 
that there is to be known concerning this species ; 
but so far as fay study of them goes they scarcely 
laugh, cry, or show any sign of emotion. They 
do not usually resent anything; they are harm- 
less and timid. Their long, lean, half-clad limbs 
look like the ghost of poverty, and their slow, 
cautious movements like decrepitude begging 
alms. They would be objects of pity if they only 
had sense enough to know how nature has 
slighted them. 

I have recently received a letter from Mr. A. 
E. McCall, of Bath, New York, inclosing a pho- 
tograph of a monkey of this kind by the name 
of Jess. The gentleman tells me that he has 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. IOI 

been giving some time to the study of the actions 
and language of this monkey, and assures me 
that it is very docile and follows him like a dog ; 
and kindly offers to make such experiments with 
it as I may suggest by which to aid me in the 
pursuit of my own researches, and I shall take 
advantage of his kind offer. 

I am aware that there are exceptions to all 
rules, and I am not disposed to deprive the spider- 
monkey of the place he may deserve in the scale 
of simian life by reason of his intellect or 
speech ; but as this book is a record of what I 
know, and not what I have heard, I shall for 
the present be compelled to place the spider- 
monkey very far down in the scale of intellect 
and speech. 

The common Macaque is a strong, well-built 
monkey of a dark-gray color, with a short, stubby 
tail. He has but few friends, and at times ap- 
pears to regret having any at all. He is quite 
active, energetic, and aggressive. He endures 
captivity well, but as a rule never becomes quite 
tame or trustworthy. His speech is of a low 
type, but he has a very singular expression of 
the mouth, which seems to indicate friendship. 
In fact, there are several different species of the 



102 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

genus Macacus that use this peculiar movement 
of the lips. They thrust the head forward and 
lower it slightly, and in this position work their 
lips as if talking with the greatest possible en- 
ergy, but without uttering a sound. They do not 
do this for food, but I have seen them do it to 
their image in the glass, and have had them do 
so with me a great number of times. I have 
been told by some that this is meant as a sign of 
anger or assault, but my own observations tend 
to attribute to it exactly the reverse of this 
meaning. Occasionally, when I have offered 
them food, I have observed them do this ; but I do 
not think it referred to the food unless it was 
intended as a vote of thanks. The first monkey 
whose voice I ever captured on the phonograph 
belonged to this tribe ; he is still in the Washing- 
ton collection and bears the name of Prince, 
under which name he may go down to history as 
the first monkey whose speech was ever recorded. 
But whatever his fame may become on that ac- 
count, I do not think he will ever justly obtain 
the reputation of being an amiable monkey. 

Among the Java monkeys are several varieties 
which make very good pets. They show a fair 
degree of intelligence and docility and are not 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 103 

generally very vicious. I have not succeeded in 
making any very good records of these monkeys, 
although I have observed, without the aid of the 
phonograph, that they have one or two very dis- 
tinct and well-marked sounds. I have not up to 
this time attempted to differentiate their sounds, 
but in a general way have interpreted the mean- 
ings of one or two groups of them, especially 
those of a friendly character. I may with pro- 
priety remark here that in all the different 
tongues of monkeys there appear to be certain 
words which are much more significant — that is, 
of a much better phonetic type than the others, 
and which occur much more frequently among 
their sounds. This appears to be true of the 
speech or sounds of all the lower animals. 

In a former chapter I have described the happy 
little family in Central Park, which consisted of 
the five little brown cousins only a few months 
ago ; but death has reduced their number to two. 
In this connection I shall mention a very im- 
portant fact concerning the use of the natural 
senses of these animals. I have several tintfls 
been assured that monkeys depended more upon 
their sense of smell than upon that of sight as 
a means of recognition; and that in this respect 



104 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

they were very much like the canines. I have 
made frequent tests of the power of their senses, 
and am prepared to say with certainty that such is 
not the case. When I visit the park I frequently 
enter at Sixty-fourth Street and Fifth Avenue, 
at which place there is a flight of stairs leading 
from the street down to a large plaza in front of 
the old armory; and something more than a 
hundred feet from the foot of the stairway, and 
nearly at right angles to it, is a window opening 
into the monkey-house near the cage occupied by 
these particular monkeys. When I descend the 
stairway and come within view of this window, 
they frequently see me as I reach the plaza, and 
the keeper always knows of my approach by the 
conduct of the monkeys, who recognize me the 
instant I come in sight at that distance. At 
other times I have approached the house from 
another direction and come within a few feet of 
their cage, where I have stood for some time in 
order to ascertain whether they were aware of 
my presence, and on a few occasions have slipped 
into the house with the crowd, and they did not 
detect my presence except by sight. It is evi- 
dent, if they depended upon the sense of smell, 
that they would have discovered my presence 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. -IO5 

when so near them, although they could not see 
me. But no matter what the condition of the 
weather or how many people are present, the in- 
stant one of them sees me he spreads the news, 
and every inmate of the cage rushes to the win- 
dow and begins to scream at the top of his voice. 
If their sense of smell was such as to enable them 
to detect my presence as a dog would, it is 
reasonable also that the monkey which possessed 
the most sensitive organs would have been the 
first to detect it in each case; whereas some- 
times one monkey and sometimes another made 
the discovery. It is my belief, however, that 
their sense of smell is much more acute than 
that of man, but far less so than that of most 
other animals, especially the dog. The sense 
of hearing in these animals is very delicate, 
as may be seen from the account of Nellie dis- 
covering my footsteps on the lower stairway, 
and as I have witnessed in scores of other cases. 
The same is true also of their sight, and their 
eyes are like a photo - camera; nothing ever 
escapes them. I think their organs of taste are 
also quite sensitive, as I have made some tests 
from time to time and find them very hard to 
deceive. The sense of touch, which is rather 



106 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

obtuse in most animals, is much more acute in 
these. I have frequently interlaced my fingers 
with those of some person whom they dislike, 
and extending the hands toward them, they 
rarely make a mistake by getting hold of the 
wrong finger ; and yet it has frequently occurred 
that they could not see the hands at all, and had 
to depend alone upon the sense of touch. In 
cases where the hands were very nearly the same 
size they were not able to select the fingers so 
readily; but where a lady's hand was used, or 
that of a boy, the selection was made without 
hesitancy and without error. I have tried this 
experiment a great many times with a view to 
ascertaining, to some extent, the delicacy of their 
sense of touch. Another fact that I may men- 
tion is that they do not habitually smell articles 
of food or other things given to them, but they 
depend chiefly upon their sight for finding and 
their taste for choosing their food. My opinion 
is that the sense of smell does not play an im- 
portant part in these affairs. I may add, too, 
that in the Cebus the tail is perhaps the most 
sensitive organ of touch, although it is not used 
in this capacity to any great extent. He is gen- 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. IO7 

erally very watchful over this useful member, 
because it serves him in so many ways, and I 
think perhaps it is safe to say that the tail is 
the last part of the monkey that ever becomes 
tame. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

The Extent of my Experiments. — Apes and Baboons. — Miscel- 
laneous Records of Sounds. — The Vocal Index. 

In quest of the great secret of speech, I have 
pursued my investigations chiefly in the direction 
of learning one tongue, but incidentally I have 
made many detours, and I have recorded the 
sounds of many other forms of the animal king- 
dom besides primates. I have examined the 
phonation of lions, tigers, leopards, cats, dogs, 
birds of many kinds, and the human voice in 
speech, music, and laughter. Besides these I 
have examined various musical sounds, especially 
of the pipe and whistle kinds. 

More than a year ago I made some splendid 
records of the sounds of the two chimpanzees in 
the Cincinnati collection. I have not had the 
opportunity to study these apes themselves, as I 
desired to do, since they are kept so closely con- 
fined in a glass house, and forever under the eye 
of their keeper, which conditions are not favor- 
able to the best results. I am not prepared, there - 
108 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. IOO, 

fore, to give much detail concerning their speech, 
but from a careful study of one cylinder contain- 
ing a record of their sounds, I was able to dis- 
cern as many as seven different phones, all of 
which come within the scope of the human vocal 
organs. I learned one of these sounds, and on a 
subsequent visit to Cincinnati I succeeded in at- 
tracting the attention of the female and eliciting 
from her a response. She would come to the 
lattice door of the inner cage by which I was 
standing, and when I would give utterance to the 
sound she would press her face against the door 
and answer it with a like sound. The male, how- 
ever, did not appear to notice it with any degree 
of concern. I have no idea what the sound 
meant, and my opportunities have not been such 
that I could translate it with the remotest degree 
of certainty. These apes will be one of the chief 
objects of my studies in tropical Africa, as I be- 
lieve them to possess a higher type of speech 
even than the gorilla. In this opinion, which I 
reached from the study of other sounds and the 
types of skull to which they belonged, I am not 
alone. Mr. Paul Du Chaillu, Mr. E. J. Glave, and 
others who have seen both of these apes in their 
native habitat agree with me on this point. I 



110 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

am aware that this view is not in strict accord 
with that of Professor Huxley, who assigns the 
gorilla the highest place next to man in the order 
of nature, and the chimpanzee next below him. 
I shall not here attempt to discuss the question 
with so high an authority, and I must confess 
that the vocal index is not yet so well defined 
that it may be relied upon in classifying apes. 
One aim I have in view is to study the gorilla 
and chimpanzee side by side in their native 
wilds, and to record if possible the sounds of 
their voices in a wild state. From the study 
I have made of the sounds, I feel confident that 
all the vocal sounds made by these apes may be 
uttered by the human vocal organs. 

Some months ago I made a record of the voice 
of the great Anubis baboon, in Philadelphia. I 
did not expect to find in him an elevated tpye of 
speech, but my purpose was to compare it with 
other simian sounds, to see if I could not estab- 
lish a series of steps in the quality of vocal 
sounds that would coincide with certain other 
characters. I had found, by the study of certain 
cranial forms, that certain vocal types conformed 
to certain skulls, and were as much a conforma- 
tion thereof as are the cerebral hemispheres. I 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. Ill 

then formed the belief , and have had no cause since 
to recede from it, that the vocal powers were cor- 
rectly measured by the gnathic index, that the 
mind and voice were commensurate, and that as 
the cranio-facial angle widens the voice degrades 
in quality and scope. In man I find the highest 
vocal type, and just as we descend in the cranial 
scale, the vocal type descends into sounds less 
flexible, less capable, and less musical. These 
deductions apply only to mammals ; among birds, 
insects, etc., a different order may prevail. 

The records of the lions show some strange 
features in the construction of sound, and when 
analyzed on the phonograph present some novel 
effects. The sound as a whole appears to be 
broken into broad waves or pulsations, but on 
analyzing it the fundamental tones somewhat 
resemble the sounds produced by drawing a mal- 
let rapidly across the keyboard of a xylophone, 
and are characterized by a peculiar resonance, 
something like the tremulous vibrations of a thin 
glass containing a small quantity of water. 
Each of these separate fundamental sounds or 
sound-units, as they appear to be, can be further 
reduced to still smaller vibrations ; and the re- 
sult suggests that the fundamental sounds them- 



112 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

selves are an aggregation of smaller vibrations. 
I have not as yet been able to compare the notes 
one by one with the scale of the xylophone in 
order to ascertain whether or not they obey the 
laws of sound upon which is founded the chro- 
matic scale of music. The lion makes only a 
small number of different sounds, nearly of the 
same pitch. I have not analyzed the vocal 
sounds of the other felines to ascertain to what 
extent they coincide with those of the lion, but 
his appears to be somewhat unlike any other 
sounds which I have examined. 

Among the few sounds of birds which I have 
analyzed I may mention the trumpeter crane. 
I have made one record of this bird, which was 
sufficiently loud to enable me to obtain some 
idea of the character of the sound. I am in 
doubt as to what the real mode of producing this 
sound is. The volume of sound evidently comes 
from the mouth of the bird, but while in the 
act of making it he appears to bring the whole 
body into use ; even the feathers appear to take 
some part in its production, and the whole frame 
of the bird vibrates in the act. The record 
which I have shows some resemblance, on analy- 
sis, to the sound made by the lion, but it is not 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. I 13 

sufficiently strong to admit of analyzing the 
sound-units or fundamental sounds. 

From the many sounds that I have analyzed, 
it appears to me that there is a difference in the 
phones' of all different genera, and that the pho- 
netic basis of human speech more closely resem- 
bles that of the simian than any other sounds ; 
but I wish to be understood distinctly not to 
offer this in evidence to establish any physical, 
mental, or phonetic affinity between mankind 
and simians. I merely state the facts, from 
which all theorists may deduce their own con- 
clusions. 
8 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Monkeys and the Mirror. — Some of their Antics. — Baby Ma- 
caque and her Papa.— Some other Monkeys. 

I have incidentally mentioned elsewhere the 
use of the mirror in some of my experiments, 
but I have not described in detail how it affected 
various monkeys. Of course, it does not always 
affect the same monkey in the same way at 
all times, nor does it affect all monkeys of the 
same species in exactly the same way, and 
therefore I cannot deduce a rule from my expe- 
riments by which the species can be determined 
by its conduct before the glass. 

When Puck saw himself in the mirror he un- 
doubtedly mistook the image for another monkey, 
to which he would talk more freely than he 
would to the sounds made by the phonograph. 
He would frequently caress the image and show 
signs of friendship; at the same time he was 
very timid and retiring. 

Nellie would chatter to herself in the mirror, 

and seemed never to tire of looking at the beau- 
114 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. I I 5 

tiful monkey she saw there, and I do not think 
the propensity could be accounted for merely by 
her sex. I do not think she ever quite under- 
stood where that monkey was concealed, and the 
scores of times in a day that she would turn the 
.glass around was evidence that she never fully 
despaired of finding it. I accidentally dropped 
a small mirror one day near the cage in which 
there was a green monkey. The glass was 
broken into many small pieces. Quick as 
thought the monkey thrust her arm through 
the bars, grabbed the largest piece, and got 
it into her cage before I was fully aware of 
what she was trying to do. The fragment was 
about an inch wide by an inch and a half long. 
She caught a glimpse of herself in the glass, 
and her conduct was more like that of a crazy 
monkey than anything I can compare it to. She 
peeped into the fragment of the mirror, which 
she seemed to regard as a hole in something 
which separated her from another monkey. 
She held it up over her head at arm's-length, 
laid it down on the floor, held it against the wall, 
and twisted herself into every pose to get a bet- 
ter peep at that mysterious monkey on the other 
side of something, she could not tell what. 



Il6 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

When the glass was reversed she seemed much 
perplexed, and would sometimes jump high off 
the floor, and turn herself entirely around as if 
to untangle the mystery. Then again she would 
discover the right side of the glass and would go 
through these antics again. Several times, while 
holding it against the wall, she would put her 
eyes close up against the glass, just as she would 
to a knot-hole in the wall. I tried in vain for 
some time to get the glass away from her lest she 
might injure herself with it, but only succeeded 
after considerable labor and through the help of 
her keeper. 

McGinty always tries to find the image behind 
the glass. He reaches his little black hand as 
far as he can around behind it, peeps over and 
under it, pecks on the glass with his fingers, 
kisses and caresses it, and grins at it with infinite 
delight. He often tries to turn the glass around 
to look on the back of it, and when he finds no 
monkey there he works his eyebrows as if per- 
plexed, and utters a sound which reminds me 
of a child under similar circumstances saying 
"Gone," when in play something is concealed 
from it to make the child believe it is lost. 
Then he will suddenly turn the glass around 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. WJ 

again as if the thought had just occurred to him, 
and when he again discovers the image he will 
laugh, chatter, peep, and peck at the glass as if 
to say: "There it is! there it is! " But like all 
other monkeys, he does not quite understand 
where that monkey conceals itself when he peeps 
over the glass. 

Mickie does not appear to enjoy the sight of 
himself in the glass. He always looks at it 
earnestly but doubtfully, and utters a low sound 
in a kind of undertone, frowns and scowls as 
though he regarded the new monkey as an in- 
truder. He rarely talks to the image only with 
this low, muttering sound, and never tries to 
find it by reaching his hand behind the glass or 
making any other investigation. Mickie, how- 
ever, has been very much petted, in consequence 
of which he is very selfish, just as children be- 
come under like treatment. 

Little Nemo always looked at himself in the 
glass in the most inquisitive and respectful man- 
ner without ever winkng an eye or betraying any 
sign of emotion, except that he would caress the 
image in the glass over and over again by press- 
ing his lips to it in perfect silence. Indeed, his 
conduct would suggest to you that he regarded 



I I S THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

the image as a portrait of some dear departed 
one which awoke the tender memories of the 
past and filled the heart too full for utterance. 
His sedate manners were very becoming. 

Dodo always appeared to be afraid of the im- 
age. She would merely take a peep and turn 
away. She would sometimes utter a single 
sound, but rarely touched her mouth to the glass 
and never felt behind it for the other monkey. 
This, perhaps, was due to the fact that she was 
afraid of some of the other inmates of the cage, 
and I do not think that she desired the colony 
increased. 

Nigger always showed great interest in the 
mirror when left alone, but when the other 
monkeys would crowd around to peep into the 
glass, he would always leave to avoid trouble 
with them. 

Uncle Remus, the white-face, always goes 
through a series of facial contortions with the 
gravity of a rural judge. He will look into the 
glass and then at me, as if to say, " Where did 
you get that monkey? " 

The little baby Macaque who was born in 
Central Park tries to engage the image in a 
romp, reaches for it in the glass, clucks, jumps 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. II9 

playfully to her perch, and looks back to see if 
the image follows ; then she will return to the 
glass and try again to induce the little ghost to 
join her in her play. Again, she will spring to 
her perch, looking back, but does not understand 
why it will not join her. During all this the 
baby's father, a sedate old Macaque, looks on with 
suspicion and a scowl, and on a few occasions 
has pulled the baby away from the glass, as if 
he knew that there was something wrong, and 
expressed his opinion in a low, ominous growl. 
He reminds me at times of some people whom I 
have seen that look very wise and intimate by 
their conduct that they know something. 

Another little Macaque makes the most in- 
describable faces, and works her lips in that pe- 
culiar fashion which I have elsewhere described, 
but she does not utter one sound. She merely 
looks in silence, and never tries to find the mon- 
key concealed behind the glass. 

The spider-monkey is a study worthy of great 
minds. When shown her image in the glass 
she takes her seat on the floor, crosses her legs, 
and fixes herself as if she expected to spend the 
day. She will then look into the glass and utter 
a low sound, and begin to reach out her long 



120 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

arms in search of the other monkey. It is sur- 
prising to see how she will adjust her reach as 
you change positions with the glass. Of course, 
as you remove the mirror from her the image is 
removed accordingly, and she extends or con- 
tracts her reach to suit that distance. 

This is not, however, an evidence of her math- 
ematical skill, since to her mind the image is 
doubtless a real thing, and she is governed by 
the same instinct or judgment in reaching for 
it as she would be if it were real. More than 
any other, the spider-monkey seems to admire 
herself in the glass ; notwithstanding she is 
about the homeliest of all the simian tribes, yet 
she will sit for hours in almost perfect silence 
and gaze upon her image. 



CHAPTER XV. 

Man and Ape. — Their Physical Relations. — Their Mental Re- 
lations. — Evolution was the Means. — Who was the Pro- 
genitor of the Ape ? — The Scale of Life. 

If we could free our hands from the manacles 
of tradition and stand aloof from our prejudices 
and look the stern facts in the face, we should be 
compelled to admit that between man and ape 
there is such a unity of design, structure, and 
function that we dare not, in the light of reason, 
deny to the ape that rank in nature to which he 
is assigned by virtue of these facts. Physiolog- 
ically there is no hiatus between man and ape 
which may not be spanned by such evidence as 
would be admitted under the strictest rules of 
interpretation. We may briefly compare these 
two creatures in a broad and general way, so 
that the unscientific and casual reader may com- 
prehend. 

• The skeleton of man is only the polished struct- 
ure of which that of the ape is the rough model. 
The identity of the two, part by part, is as much 



122 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

the same as the light sulky is the outgrowth 
of the massive framework of the old-time cart. 
Whether man and ape are related by any ties of 
blood or not, it is evident that they were mod- 
elled on the same plan, provided with the same 
means, and designed for like purposes, whatever 
they may be. The organs of sensation and the 
functions which they discharge are the same in 
both, and the same external forces addressing 
themselves thereto produce the same results. I 
do not mean to say that the same organ in each 
is developed in the same degree as that in the 
other ; for this is not the case even in different 
individuals of the same kind. In the mu.scular 
system of the one is found an exact duplicate of 
the other, except in such slight changes of model 
as will better adapt the parts to those conditions 
of life under which the animal having them may 
be placed, and through the whole physical 
structure of both we find that unity of part and 
purpose in structure and function, in bone, mus- 
cle, nerve, and brain. It has been shown, beyond 
a reasonable doubt, that the brain in the higher 
races of mankind has reached its present form 
through a series of changes which are constant 
and definite, and this organ in the lower types 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 12 3 

of man resembles more that of the ape than does 
the same organ in the higher types of man ; and 
by a method of deduction, such as we use to de- 
termine the height of a tree or the width of a 
stream by the length of a shadow, we find that 
the fiducial lines which bound the planes in the 
perspective of man's cerebral growth likewise 
embrace those of the ape. While it is a fact that 
the mind of man so far transcends that of the 
ape, it is also a fact that in reaching this condi- 
tion it has passed through such planes as those 
now occupied by the ape. The physical changes 
of man's brain do not appear to keep pace with 
the growth of his mind. This may be a paradox, 
but the evidence upon which it rests is ample to 
sustain it. 

I do not pretend to know whether man was 
evolved from ape or ape from man; whether 
they are congenetic products of a common au- 
thorship or the master-pieces of two rival au- 
thors; but I cannot see in what respect man's 
identity would be affected, whatever may be the 
case. If it be shown that man descended from 
the ape, it does not change the facts which have 
existed from the beginning, nor does it change 
the destiny to which he is assigned. If it can be 



124 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

shown that apes descended from man, it does not 
leave upon man the censure for this degeneracy. 
If man has risen from the low plane of brute- 
hood which the ape now occupies, has scaled the 
barriers which now separate him from apes, and 
has climbed to the divine heights of mental and 
moral manhood, the ape deserves no praise for 
this. On the other hand, if apes have fallen 
from the state of man, have strayed so far from 
the gates of light, and are now wandering in the 
twilight of intellect and degradation, it is no re- 
proach to man ; and while I shall not sit in judg- 
ment in the cause nor testify on either side, I 
am willing to accept whatever verdict may be 
founded on the real facts, and I shall not appeal 
therefrom. But I shall not allow my prejudice 
to conceal the truth when shown to me ; truth is 
always acceptable to my mind, and, stripped of 
all sophistry and oblique conditions, it would 
appear the same to every mind. 

That evolution is the mode by which the world 
was peopled, there is little doubt; but there are 
many details yet unsettled as to the manner in 
which this was effected. I cannot regard the 
matter as proven beyond appeal that man has 
come from any antecedent type that was not 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 12 5 

man, nor yet do I deny that such may be the 
case ; but I do deny that the broad chasm which 
separates man from other primates cannot be 
crossed on the bridge of speech, and while this 
does not prove their identity or common origin, 
it does show that Nature did not intend that 
either one should monopolize any gift which she 
had to bestow. It is as reasonable to believe that 
man has always occupied a sphere of life apart 
from that of apes as to believe that apes have 
occupied a sphere of life apart from birds, except 
that the distance from centre to centre is greater 
between birds and apes than that distance be- 
tween apes and man. So far as any fossil proofs 
contribute to our knowledge, we find no point at 
which the line is crossed in either case, and the 
earliest traces of man's physiological history finds 
him distinctly man, and this history reaches back, 
on meagre evidence, many, many centuries be- 
fore historic time. Among these earlier remains 
of man we find no fossils of the simian type to 
show that he existed at that time, but at a some- 
what later period we find some remnants of the 
simian in deposits of Southern Europe; these, 
however, are of the smaller tribes, and have been 
assigned to the Macacus. We cannot trace the 



126 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

history of this genus from that to the present time 
to ascertain whether they were the progenitors 
of apes or not, but between this type and that of 
apes the hiatus is as broad as that which inter- 
venes between the ape and man. 

That somewhere in the lapse of time all genera 
began, admits of no debate; and, by inversion, 
it is plain that all generic outlines must focus at 
the point from which they first diverged, and 
such an operation does not indicate that man and 
simian have ever been more closely allied than 
they are at the present time ; but the evidence is 
clear that man has been evolved from a lower 
plane than he now occupies. The inference may 
be safely applied to apes, as progress is the uni- 
versal law of life. 

The question has been asked, " Who is the 
progenitor of man? " The solution of this prob- 
lem has engaged the most profound minds of 
modern times. If it be said in reply that apes 
were the progenitors of man, the question then 
arises, " Who was the progenitor of the ape? " If 
it be said that man and ape had a common pro- 
genitor, a like question arises, and it becomes 
necessary to connect all types allied to each other 
as these two types are physically allied. If man 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 1 27 

is the climax of a great scheme in nature, by 
which one type is gradually transformed into 
another, we must descend the scale of life by 
crossing the chasm which lies between mankind 
and apes, another lying between the apes and 
monkeys, another between the monkeys and 
baboons, another between the baboons and le- 
murs, and yet another between the lemurs and 
the lemuroids, and thus from form to form like 
islands in the great sea of life. From man to in- 
finity the question constantly recurs, and over 
each hiatus must be built a separate bridge. 

Darwin has given to the world the most pro- 
found and conscientious work, and from the 
chaos and confusion of human ignorance and 
bigotry has erected the most sublime monuments 
of thought and truth. It does not detract from 
his character and honesty nor lessen the value of 
his labors to admit that he may have been mis- 
taken in some conclusions which he deduced from 
the great store of facts at his command. 

It is not the purpose of this work, however, to 
enter into a discussion of any theory aside from 
speech and its possible origin and growth ; but all 
subjects pertaining to life, thought, and the modes 
of living and thinking must contribute in some 



128 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

degree to a clear understanding of the subject 
in hand. 

It has been a matter of surprise to me that so 
careful and observant a man as Mr. Darwin 
should have so nearly omitted the question of 
speech from a work of such ample scope, such 
minute detail, and such infinite care as character- 
izes the " Descent of Man " and such like works. 
But science will cheerfully forgive an error and 
pardon the sin of omission in one who has given 
to the world so much good. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

The Faculty of Thought. — Emotion and Thought. — Instinct 
and Reason. — Monkeys Reason. — Some Examples. 

The study of biology has revealed many facts 
which conspire to show that the incipient forms 
of animal and vegetable life are the same in those 
two great kingdoms; and parallel with this fact 
I think it can be shown that the faculty of ex- 
pression goes hand in hand with life. And why 
should not this be the case? From the stand- 
point of religion, I cannot see why the bounty 
of God should not be equal to such a gift, npr 
can I conceive of a more sublime act of univer- 
sal justice than that all things endowed with 
thought, however feeble, should be endowed with 
the power of expressing it. From the stand- 
point of evolution, I cannot understand by what 
rule Nature would have worked to develop the 
emotions, sensations, and faculties alike in all 
these various forms, and make this one excep- 
tion in the case of speech. It does not seem in 

keeping with her laws. From the stand-point of 
9 129 



130 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

chance, I cannot see why such an accident might 
not have occurred at some other point in the 
scale of life, or why such anomalies are not more 
frequent. Man appears to be the only one. 
From any point of view we take it does not seem 
consistent with other facts. All other primates 
think and feel, and live and die, under like con- 
ditions and on like terms with man ; then why 
should he alone possess the gift of speech ? 

I confess that such an inference is not evi- 
dence, however logical; but I have many facts to 
offer in proof that speech is not possessed by 
man alone. It is quite difficult to draw the line 
at any given point between the process of 
thought and those phenomena we call emotions. 
They emerge into and blend with each other 
like the colors in light; and in like manner the 
faculty of speech, receding through the various 
modes of expression, is forever lost in the haze 
and distance of desire. The faculty of reason 
blends into thought as the water of a bay blends 
into the open sea; there is nowhere a positive 
line dividing them. When we are in the midst 
of one we point to the other and say, " There it 
is;" but we cannot say at what exact point we 
pass out of one into the other. 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 131 

To reason is to think methodically and to 
judge from attending facts. When a monkey 
examines the situation and acts in accordance 
with the facts, doing a certain thing with the 
evident purpose of accomplishing a certain end, 
in what respect is this not reason? When a 
monkey remembers a thing which has passed and 
anticipates a thing which is to come ; when he 
has learned a thing by experience, which he 
avoids through memory and the apprehension of 
its reoccurrence, is it instinct that guides his 
conduct? When a monkey shows clearly by his 
actions that he is aware of the relation between 
cause and effect, and acts in accordance there- 
with, is it instinct or reason that guides him? If 
there be a point in the order of nature where 
reason became an acquired faculty, it is some- 
where far below the plane occupied by monkeys. 
Their power of reasoning is far inferior to that 
of man, but not more so than their power of 
thinking and expression ; but a faculty does not 
lose its identity by reason of its feebleness. 
When the same causes under the same conditions 
prompt man and ape alike to do the same act in 
the same way, looking forward to the same re- 
sults, I cannot understand why the motive of the 



rj2 THE SPEECH OF MONKEVS. 

( >ne should be called reason and that of the other 
called instinct. Scholars have tried so hard to 
keep the peace between theology and themselves 
that they have explained things in accordance 
with accepted belief, in order that they might not 
incur the charge of heresy. To this end they 
have reconciled the two extremes by ignoring 
the means, and making a distinction without a 
difference on which to found it. 

Whatever may be the intrinsic difference be- 
tween reason and instinct, it is evident to my 
mind that the same motives actuate both man 
and ape in the same way, but not to the same ex- 
tent. I am aware that many acts performed by 
simians are meaningless to them, and done with- 
out a well-defined motive. The strong physical 
resemblance between man and ape often causes 
one to attach more importance to an act than it 
really justifies. In many cases the same act per- 
formed by some other animal less like man would 
scarcely be noticed. To teach an ape or monkey 
to eat with knife, fork, cup, and spoon, to use a 
napkin and chair, or such like feats does not in- 
dicate to my mind a high order of reason ; nor is 
it safe to judge the mental status of these creat- 
ures from such data. When he is placed under 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. I 33 

new conditions and committed to his own re- 
sources, we are then better able to judge by his 
conduct whether he is actuated by reason or not. 

In any simple act where a monkey can see the 
cause connected with and closely followed by 
the effect, he is actuated by reason ; and while he 
may not be able to explain to his own mind a 
remote or complex cause, but simply accepts the 
fact, it does not make the act any less rational in 
a monkey than the same act would be in man 
where he fails to grasp the ultimate cause. The 
difference is that man is able to trace the connect- 
ing causes and effects through a longer series 
than a monkey can. Man can assign a more 
definite reason for his acts than a monkey can ; 
but it is also true that one man can assign a 
more definite reason for his acts than another 
man can for his, when prompted by the same 
motives to the same act. 

The processes, motives, acts, and results are 
the same with man and ape ; the degree to which 
they reason differs, but the kind of reason in both 
cases is the same. 

I shall here relate some instances in my expe- 
rience, and leave the reader to judge whether 
reason or instinct guided the acts of the monkeys 



134 THE. SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

as I shall detail them in the next few paragraphs. 
It will be remembered that these were new con- 
ditions under which the monkeys acted. 

I taught Nellie to drink milk from a bottle 
with a rubber nipple. While I would hold the 
bottle it was easy for her to secure the milk, 
but when she undertook it alone she utterly 
failed. The thing which puzzled her was how 
to get the milk to come up to her end of the 
bottle. She turned it in every way and held it 
in every position that she could think of ; but the 
milk always kept at the other end of the bottle. 
vShe would throw the bottle down in despair, and 
when she would see the milk flow to the end hav- 
ing the nipple, she would go back and pick it 
up and try it again. Poor Nellie would worry 
her little head over this, and again abandon it in 
despair. While trying to solve the mystery, she 
discovered a new trick. While the bottle was 
partly inverted she caught hold of the nipple and 
squeezed it. By this means she accidentally 
spurted the milk into the faces of some ladies 
who were watching her. This afforded her so 
much fun that she could scarcely be restrained, 
and while she remained with me she remembered 
this funny trick and never failed to perform it 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 1 35 

when she was allowed to do so. It was no trouble 
for her to connect the immediate effect to the 
immediate cause. But she could not for a long- 
time understand that the position of the bottle or 
the location of the milk in it had anything to do 
with the trick. In the course of time, however, 
she learned to hold the bottle so that she could 
drink the milk ; and she also discovered that it 
had to be held in a certain position in order to 
play her amusing trick. 

Another instance was in the case of a little 
monkey heretofore described by the name of 
Jennie. When you would throw a nut just out 
of her reach, she would take a stick which had 
a nail in the end and rake the nut to her. She 
never took the wrong end of the stick, and never 
placed the nail on the wrong side of the nut. 
Her master assured me that she had not been 
taught this, but had found the stick and applied 
it to this use. When she would not want any 
one to play with her or handle her, she would 
coil her chain up and sit down on it to keep any 
one from taking hold of it. 

It is not an uncommon thing for monkeys to 
discover the means by which their cage is kept 
fastened, and they have frequently been known 



136 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

to untie a knot in a rope or chain, and thus re- 
lease themselves. I have known a monkey that 
learned to reach its hand through the meshes of 
the cage and withdraw the pin which fastened 
the hasp, and thus open the door and get out. 
The keeper substituted a small wire, which he 
twisted three or four times in order that it could 
not be released. The monkey realized that the 
wire performed the duties of the pin and pre- 
vented the door from opening. He also knew 
that the wire was twisted, and that this was the 
reason he could not remove it. I have seen him 
put his hand through the meshes of the cage, 
catch the loose end of the wire, and turn it as 
though he was turning a crank. He evidently 
knew that the twist in the wire was made by such 
a motion, and his purpose was to untwist it; but, 
so far as I know, he never succeeded in doing so. 
I have frequently seen a monkey gather up his 
chain and measure the distance from where he 
stood to the point at which he expected to alight 
with the skill and accuracy of an engineer. 

A gentleman of my acquaintance recently 
assured me that during his sojourn of two 
years in the Island of Sumatra he had in his 
service a large orang. This ape did numerous 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 1 37 

chores about the place and performed many 
simple duties as well as the domestics did. 
On one occasion he was induced to go on 
board a steamer which lay in the harbor. The 
purpose was to kidnap him and carry him to Eu- 
rope. Either through fear, instinct, reason, or 
some other cause, he jumped overboard and 
swam ashore, although he was naturally afraid of 
water. From that time on to the end of the 
gentleman's residence there, he assured me that 
whenever a steamer would make its appearance 
in the harbor the ape would take flight to the 
forest, where he would stay as long as the vessel 
remained in sight. He would be seen from time 
to time, but could not be induced to return to the 
house until the vessel had departed. 

A few years ago I saw, on board the United 
States receiving ship Franklin, a bright little 
monkey, which was kept chained in a temporary 
workshop built on the gun-deck. Her chain 
was just long enough to allow her to reach the 
stove. The day was pleasant outside, but in the 
shade a trifle chilly. The little monkey descended 
from the sill on which she usually sat, and care- 
fully felt the top of the stove with her hands. 
Finding it slightly warm, although the fire had 



I 38 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

died out, she mounted the stove and laid the side 
of her head on the warm surface. She would 
turn first one cheek and then the other, and con- 
tinued rubbing the stove with her hands. Not 
finding it warm enough she jumped down on the 
floor, opened the stove door with her hand, and 
slammed it two or three times. She then picked 
up a stick of wood lying within reach and tried 
to lift it to the stove. The stick was too heavy 
for her to handle, so she would lift up one end 
of it and drop it heavily on the floor, with the 
evident purpose of attracting the attention of her 
master. Again she would open and slam the 
door, lift up the end of the stick and drop it, and 
utter a peculiar sound, showing in every possible 
way that she wanted a fire. She finally picked 
up a small stick and stuck the end of it into the 
ashes in the front of the stove. She knew that 
it was necessary to put the wood into the stove ; 
she knew where to put it in, and while she could 
not do it herself, she knew who could put it in. 
Her master told me that she would gather up the 
shavings from the floor when they came within 
her reach and pile them up by the stove. He 
also told me that he frequently gave her a 
lighted match when he had prepared the fuel for 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 1 39 

building a fire, and that she would touch the 
match to the shavings and start the fire. She 
never ventured to get on the stove without first 
examining it to ascertain how hot it was. 

Another feat which she performed was to try to 
remove some tar from the cup in which he gave 
her water and milk. The cup had been lined 
with tar as a sanitary measure to prevent con- 
sumption, and she was aware that the tar im- 
parted an unpleasant taste and odor, hence she 
tried very hard to remove it from the cup. Was 
this instinct? 



TcART II. 
THE THEORY OF SPEECH. 



CHAPTER I. 

Speech Defined.— The True Nature of Speech.— The Use of 
Speech. — The Limitations of Speech. 

What is speech? I shall endeavor to define 
it in such terms as will relieve it of ambiguity, 
and deal with it as a known quantity in the prob- 
lems of mental commerce. Speech is that form 
of materialized thought confined to oral sounds 
when they are designed to convey a definite idea 
from mind to mind. It is, therefore, only one 
mode of expressing thought ; and to come within 
the limits of speech the sounds must be volun- 
tary, have fixed values, and be intended to sug- 
gest to another mind a certain idea or group of 
ideas more or less complex. The idea is one fac- 
tor and sound the other, and the two conjointly 
constitute speech. The empty sounds alone, how- 
ever modulated, having no integral value, cannot 
be speech ; nor can the concept, unexpressed, be 
speech. Separately, the one would be noise and 
the other would be thought ; and they only be- 
come speech when the thought is expressed in 
143 



144 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

oral sounds. Sounds which only express emotion 
are not speech, as emotion is not thought, although 
it is frequently attended by thought, and is a cause 
of which thought is the effect. Music expresses 
emotion by means of sounds, but they are not 
speech, and even though the sounds which ex- 
press them may impart a like emotion to the 
hearer, they are not speech. The sounds which 
express crying, sighing, or laughter may indeed 
be a faint suggestion of speech, since we infer 
from them the state of the mind attending the 
emotions which produce them ; yet they are not 
truly speech. To be regarded as speech the ex- 
pression must be preceded by consciousness and 
the desire to make known to another the sensa- 
tion by which the expression is actuated. As 
the impulse can only come from within, it~ ap- 
pears that emotion is one source from which 
thought is evolved, and speech is the natural 
issue of thought. Desire gives rise to a class 
of thoughts having reference to the sensations 
which produce them, and such thoughts find ex- 
pression in such sounds as may suggest supplying 
the want. As the wants of man have increased 
with his changing modes of life and thought, 
his speech has drawn upon the resources of 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. I45 

sound to meet those increased demands for ex- 
pression. It appears only reasonable to me that 
thought must precede, in point of time and order, 
any expression of thought; for thought is the mo- 
tive of expression, and the expression of thought 
in oral sounds is speech. Speech is not an in- 
vention, and therefore is not symbolic in its 
radical nature. True, that much that is symbolic 
has been added to it, and its bounds have been 
widened as man has risen in the scale of civil 
life, until our higher types of modern speech 
have departed so far from the natural modes of 
speech and first forms of expression that we can 
rarely trace a single word to its ultimate source. 
And viewing it as we do from our present stand- 
point, it appears to be purely symbolic ; but if 
that be so, then we must deny the first law of 
progress, and assign the origin of this faculty 
to that class of phenomena known as miracles, 
which once explained, by increasing the mystery, 
what we could not understand, and served at 
the same time to conceal the exact magnitude of 
our ignorance ; but as we added little by little to 
our stock of knowledge, such phenomena were 
brought within the realm of our understanding, 
and to-day our children are familiar with the 



146 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

causes of many simple effects which our fore- 
fathers dared not attempt to solve, but reverently 
ascribed to the immediate influence of divinity. 
If speech in its ultimate nature is symbolic, what 
must have been the condition of man before its 
invention, and how did he arrive at the first term 
or sound of speech? He did not invent sound 
nor the means of making it. He did not invent 
thought, the thing - which speech expresses; and 
it is no more reasonable to believe that he in- 
vented speech than to believe that he invented 
the faculties of sight and hearing, which are cer- 
tainly the natural product of his organic nature 
and environments. So far as I can find through 
the whole range of animal life, all forms of land 
mammals possess vocal organs, which are devel- 
oped in a degree corresponding to the condition 
of the brain, and seem to be in every instance as 
capable of producing and controlling sounds as 
the brain is of thinking; in other words, the 
power of expression is in perfect keeping with 
the power of thinking. From my acquaintance 
with the animal kingdom, it is my firm belief 
that all mammals possess the faculty of speech 
in a degree commensurate with their experience 
and needs, and that domestic animals have a 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 147 

somewhat higher type of speech than do their 
wild progenitors. Why are all forms of mam- 
mals endowed with vocal organs? Why should 
nature bestow on them these organs if not de- 
signed for use? One or the other of two conclu- 
sions seems inevitable. As a law of evolution and 
progress, all organs are imparted to animals for 
use and not for ornament. It seems consistent, 
from what we know of nature, to suppose that the 
vocal organs of these lower forms are being de- 
veloped to meet a new requirement in the animal 
economy, or, having once discharged some func- 
tion necessary to the being and comfort of the 
animal, they are now lapsing into disuse and be- 
coming atrophied. If they are in the course of 
development, it argues that the creature which 
possesses them must possess a rudimentary 
speech which is developing at a like rate into a 
higher type of speech. If they are in a state of 
decay or atrophy, it argues that the animal must 
have been able to speak at some former period, 
and that now, in losing the power of speech, it is 
gradually losing the organ. In either case, the 
organs themselves would be in a state of devel- 
opment in harmony with the condition of the 
speech of the animal. The function which 



148 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

speech discharges is the communication of ideas, 
and its growth must depend upon the extent of 
those ideas; and in all conditions of life and 
in all forms of the animal kingdom the uses of 
speech are confined to and limited by the desires, 
thoughts, and concepts of those using it. Its ex- 
tent is commensurate with requirement. To be- 
lieve that there was a time in the history of the 
human race when man could not speak is to de- 
stroy his identity as man, and the romance of the 
alalus could be justified from a scientific stand- 
point only as a compromise between the giants 
of science and superstition. Among the tribes 
of men whose modes of life are simple, whose 
wants are few, and whose knowledge is confined 
to their primitive condition, the number of words 
necessary to convey their thoughts is very 
limited. Among some savage races are lan- 
guages consisting of only a few hundred words 
at most, while as we rise in the scale of civil and 
domestic culture languages become more copious 
and expressive as the wants become more numer- 
ous and the conditions of life more complex. 
As we descend from man to the lower animals, 
we find the types of speech degenerate just in 
proportion as we descend in the mental and moral 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 1 49 

plane ; but it does not lose its identity as speech. 
Through the whole animal kingdom from man 
to protozoa, types of speech differ as do the phys- 
ical types to which they belong. But as the same 
vital processes are found throughout the whole 
circle of life, so the same phonetic basis is found 
through the whole range of speech. 



CHAPTER II, 

The Motives of Speech.— Expression. — The Beginning of Hu- 
man Speech. — The Present Condition of Speech. 

In vital economy the search-light of science 
has found the protoplasm which, from our present 
state of knowledge, seems to be the first point of 
contact between elemental matter and the vital 
force. What secrets of biology remain unknown 
within the realm of life only those who live in 
the future may ever know. In the first condition 
of vitalized matter we find the evidence of au- 
tonomy. Whatever may be the ultimate force 
which actuates this monad, the manifestations of 
its presence and the result of its energy are seen 
externally. Whatever may be the nature of that 
force which imparts motion to matter, the first 
impulse of the biod is to secure food or to asso- 
ciate itself with a unit of its own kind. This is 
perhaps the first act of volition within the sphere 
of life, the first expression of some internal want, 
and is the first faint suggestion of a conscious- 
ness, however feeble; and I may add with prc- 
150 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 1 5 I 

priety that it is my opinion that the vital and 
psychic forces operate in a manner not unlike 
the electric and chemical forces. They appear 
to polarize, and in this condition act on matter in 
harmony with that great law of nature under 
which positive repels positive and attracts neg- 
ative, and vice versa. We shall not attempt to fol- 
low the tedious steps of progress from inanimate 
matter to man, but begin with those intermediate 
forms which are so far developed as to utter 
sounds and understand the sounds of others. 
We will deal only with tangible facts as we find 
them. From whatever source expression may 
arise or at whatever point it may appear, it is 
prompted by desire or some kindred emotion, 
either positive or negative. 

At the point where we begin to discuss this 
question there are two distinct modes of expres- 
sion, either one of which can be used without the 
other. But I may mention here a cogent fact — 
that in the lower forms of life the normal mode 
of expression is by signs with supplemental 
sounds. In the higher forms expression is by 
sounds, and signs are supplemental; and from 
the lower to the higher forms this transition is 
in harmony with the development of physical 



152 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

types. It occurs to me that signs were the first 
form of expression, and that sounds were first 
used to call attention to the signs made ; and by 
an association of ideas the sounds became a fac- 
tor of expression and were used to emphasize 
signs. As we ascend the scale of life sounds 
become more abundant and signs less significant ; 
and in the middle types they appear to be of 
nearly equal value, while in the higher tribes of 
man sounds are the normal mode of expression, 
and signs or gestures are used to emphasize 
them ; and thus we see that signs and sounds in 
the development of the faculty of expression 
have quite changed places. This is consistent 
with the observed facts within the limits of 
human speech. There are tribes of mankind 
whose language is scarcely intelligible among 
themselves unless accompanied by signs, and it 
is said of some of the African tribes that their 
gestures are more eloquent than their speech. 
It appears to me consistent to believe that speech 
appears in the animal organism simultaneously 
with the vocal organs, and that the desire of ex- 
pression must have preceded this. The con- 
dition of the vocal organs depends upon the type 
of speech which they are used to utter, and the 






THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 1 53 

speech depends upon the quality of thought it is 
intended to express. That type of speech used 
by the Caucasian race within the space of a few 
centuries has developed from a vocabulary lim- 
ited to a few thousand words into the polished 
languages of modern Europe, comprising new 
types and tens of thousands of new words, until 
to-day our own language contains more than two 
hundred and twenty thousand words — very few 
of which, however, if any, are entirely new. The 
phonetic elements on which is built up this huge 
vocabulary do not very greatly exceed in num- 
ber those found in the lowest types of human 
speech in the world. The total number of these 
sounds does not much exceed two score in the 
highest forms of human speech ; and about half 
this number can be shown as the vocal products 
of some species of the lower animals. Some 
philologists claim that the blending of consonant 
and vowel sounds is the mark which distinguishes 
human speech from the sounds uttered by the 
lower animals. To show how poorly this gigan- 
tic superstructure of fossilized science is sup- 
ported by the facts, I have developed such effects 
in the phonograph from a basis of sounds purely 
mechanical, and without the aid of any part of 



154 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

the vocal apparatus of man or animal. The 
sounds from which I have developed such results 
were neither vowel nor consonant as those sounds 
are defined, but simply prolonged musical notes. 
In another chapter will be found some of the 
experiments which I have performed with the 
phonograph in the investigation of sounds of va- 
rious kinds. If I am allowed to think for myself 
at all, I am not ready to accept as final some of 
the dogmas on the theory of sound which have 
long been held and taught, and many of which 
remain orthodox for no other reason than that no 
one has denied them. I am not ready at this 
point to spring upon the world any new theory 
of sound, but I am quite ready to refuse to be- 
lieve some of the tenets set forth in the creeds 
of philology. Heresy is the author of progress, 
and I confess myself a heretic on many of the 
current doctrines of the science of sounds. 



CHAPTER III. 

Language Embraces Speech.— Speech, Words, Grammar, and 
Rhetoric. 

A definition of the word speech, as used in 
this particular work, is given elsewhere; and by 
this definition the word is used only in that sense 
which limits it to the sphere of oral sounds. It 
is that form of language which addresses itself 
only to the ear. The sounds which constitute 
it may be supplemented by signs or gestures, 
but such signs are only adjuncts, and are not 
to be regarded as an integral part of speech 
in its true sense. Speech cannot be acquired 
by those forms of life which occupy the lowest 
horizons of the animal kingdom and have no 
organs with which to produce sound. In the 
light of modern use and acceptation, language 
broadly interpreted includes all modes and 
means of communication between mind and 
mind. It therefore includes speech as one form, 
while signs or gestures constitute another form. 
Writing in all its various modes % is another form 
i55 



156 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

of language. It may be substituted for either 
speech or gestures, but it does not thereby be- 
come speech in a literal sense ; but within itself 
it constitutes another form of language. There 
seems to be some vague and subtle method of 
communication found in certain spheres of life 
which is called telepathy. While it is a mere 
ghost of language, so to speak, it has an identity 
which cannot be denied. This may, perhaps, be 
called another form of language. 

By some eminent men of letters it is claimed 
that speech was invented and therefore cannot 
be universally the same ; and this is proven by 
the fact that different tribes of men have different 
tongues. They do not appear to realize that to the 
first cardinal sounds of speech so much has been 
added age by age, by slow accretions, that the 
radix of speech is but a mere drop in the great 
ocean of sounds. The mobility of speech is such 
as to make it more susceptible to change than 
matter is ; and yet we find that by the laws of 
change man has been evolved from a less com- 
plex state of matter, and that in these latter 
years he can only be identified as the descendant 
of his prototype by the most scrutinizing care and 
by picking up the dropped stitches in the great 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 1 57 

fabric of nature. To illustrate the slow and im- 
perceptible yet never-ceasing, never-failing proc- 
ess of evolution, we may imagine a man picking 
up a single grain of sand at a certain point and 
carrying it a distance of a thousand feet, where 
he deposits it at another certain point ; return- 
ing, takes a second grain from the place where 
he secured the first and carries it to the point 
at which he deposited the first, and thus contin- 
ues through his life. At his death his son suc- 
ceeds him in the task and continues through his 
life, and at the death of this man his son suc- 
ceeds, and thus in turn each one succeeds the 
other through a million generations. Supposing 
the wind and rain left these grains of sand un- 
molested during this long lapse of time, it is evi- 
dent that at the place from which the sand was 
taken there would be a hole, and where it was 
deposited there would be a hill. It is by such 
slight changes that Nature does her work, and 
thus it is that speech, as well as matter, has been 
transformed from what it was into what it is. 
The physical basis of life retains its identity 
through all those varied forms from protozoa to 
the highest type, and so the phonetic basis of 
speech adheres through all the changing modes 



158 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

of thought and expression. Speech is the high- 
est type of language and the most accurate mode 
of expression, and belongs only to the higher 
forms of the animal kingdom. It has passed 
through all inferior horizons coinciding with the 
mental, moral, and social planes through which 
man has passed in the course of his evolution. 

Words are the factors of speech and the high- 
est development of that faculty. A word maybe 
composed of one or more sounds, so articulated 
as to preclude any interval of time between the 
utterance of any two of them — as " tune," in which 
the sounds appear to overlap and blend into each 
other. A single word may signify more than a 
single thing, and sometimes will suggest to the 
mind a category or group of connected thoughts, 
as "eat" or " telegraph," and such is the value of 
many of our words. This is especially true of 
words which combine two roots ; but such a com- 
bination is usually found only in the higher types 
of human speech. But in these higher types 
words bear such relations to each other that we 
cannot well convey a complete idea with a single 
word, and hence it is that in the modes of ex- 
pression used by man each separate statement 
consists of two or more words bearing certain re- 






THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 1 59 

lationsto each other, and these are often qualified 
by other words of less importance. This redun- 
dancy is due to the higher and more complex 
modes of thought used by man, and it is on such 
a state of facts that we have founded that branch 
of science called grammar, which would be of 
little use among those forms which occupy the 
planes of life inferior to man ; and it is found of 
little use among the lower tribes of man, where 
it does not exist in any written form. Grammar 
does not make language, but serves as a kind of 
anchor by which the dialects of human speech 
are somewhat unified and made more stable, and 
to this is due in some measure the fact that sav- 
age tongues and dialects are more susceptible to 
change in their structure, while the phonetic 
basis upon which they rest remains the same. 

In the more refined tongues of human speech 
we go beyond that code of laws called grammar 
and amplify them into rhetoric. This branch of 
the science of speech could find no place among 
the lower types, as the words are few from which 
they may select, and so exact and arbitrary is the 
meaning of each one and so uniform the rela- 
tions that no great variety of expression can be 
made with such a limited vocabulary. Their 



160 the SPEECH OF monkeys. 

eloquence is in their brevity of speech. But 
while the types of speech used by the lower pri- 
mates occupy a plane so low in the scale, they 
ars as truly speech as the vocal organs that pro- 
duce the sounds are truly vocal organs. Life is 
life, in what form soever it is found. It is not 
less real in the mollusk than in the man. The 
same is true of emotion, of thought, of expres- 
sion, and of speech. Life, emotion, thought, ex- 
pression, and speech began in embryo, and have 
developed co-ordinately with all the faculties pos- 
sessed by man. They are as dependent upon 
each other as matter is on force, and as insepa- 
rable as light from energy. Speech is the phys- 
ical manifestation of which thought is the ulti- 
mate force ; it is a spoke in the chariot-wheels of 
consciousness; it is the body of which thought 
is the soul. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Life and Consciousness. — Consciousness and Emotion. — Emo- 
tion and Thought. — Thought and Expression. — Expression 
and Speech. — The Vocal Organs and Sound. — Speech in 
City and Country. — Music, Passions, and Taste.— Life and 
Reason. 

At the beginning of life there is a conscious- 
ness which is not more feeble than is the life 
with which it is associated, and as that spark of 
life kindles into a flame, so that spark of con- 
sciousness kindles into the "ego," and nowhere 
can a line be drawn at which it may be said, 
" Here consciousness first intercepted life." But 
as the living form develops organs and mem- 
bers through the agency of the vital force, what- 
ever that may be, so consciousness develops into 
desires, emotion, and thought. Where shall the 
line be drawn which separates these attributes? 

Standing in the centre, we look around and see 
the horizon touching the plain on every side, and 
this appears to us as a great circle, the centre of 
which is always occupied by the observer, and 
from our standpoint we imagine that everything 



1 62 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

between us and that horizon must be that distance 
from the centre ; but as we move our point of 
view from place to place we move the circle with 
us, and yet we cannot find the boundary-line 
which marks this circle at any time. In a manner 
not unlike this we pass from centre to centre of 
the circles of life, and carry with us the circle, 
so that at no one point do we ever appear to be 
much closer to the horizon than we were at any 
other point. 

The classification of genera and species is in a 
great degree arbitrary, but much less so than are 
these abstract characters of life and mind. There 
is nowhere a line at which emotion stops and 
thought begins ; there is nowhere a line at which 
thought stops and expression begins ; there is no- 
where a line at which expression stops and speech 
begins. These blend into each other so that only 
by comparing the extremes can we discern a dif- 
ference. 

The tenets of metaphysics have heretofore 
been made to harmonize with the tenets of theol- 
ogy, and hence it is that we have learned to fol- 
low the laws laid down by others, and not to 
think for ourselves. It has been as much a her- 
esy to gainsay the dogmas of science as those of 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 163 

religion until recently; and even now the ten- 
der-footed doctors guard their theories with a 
vigilance and jealousy worthy of the angel that 
guarded the gates of Eden. 

Why should it be thought strange that mon- 
keys talk? They see, hear, love, hate, think, 
and act by the same means and to the same end 
as man does. They experience pain and pleas- 
ure, to express which they cry and laugh just 
as man does. If the voluntary sounds they make 
do not mean something, why may those creatures 
not as well be dumb? If they do mean some- 
thing, why may we not determine what that 
meaning is? It is true that their language is 
quite meagre and suited only to a low plane of 
life; but it may be the cytula from which all 
human speech proceeds, or it may be the inferior 
fruit borne upon the same great tree of speech. 
The organs of sensation in these creatures are 
modelled by the same design as those of man, are 
adapted to the same uses, and discharge the same 
functions. Then why should the vocal powers 
alone be abnormal except in a degree measured 
by the difference of place which they occupy in 
the scale of nature? 

Social intercourse among men has been the 



164 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

chief means of developing human speech, and 
we find a true index to its condition in the social 
status of the different races of mankind, and by 
coming closer home we find that even in differ- 
ent communities of the same race, and within 
the limits of the same nation, a difference in 
the accuracy and volume of speech, which is 
measured by the difference of social culture. 
We find in rural districts sparsely peopled and 
remote from the great centres of population that 
speech is less polished, and the number of words 
used greatly reduced in comparison to the same 
language used in the great cities and more pop- 
ulous communities, where, by reason of contact 
with each other and the constant use of speech, 
the vocal powers are much more developed and 
the command of language very much* improved. 
This same law of development inversely applied 
would lead us in a direct line down through nat- 
ure, rank by rank, and we would find it a reli- 
able unit of measure throughout the whole per- 
spective of development. The faculties of music, 
taste, and reason are measured by a like unit. It 
is difficult to trace the musical powers of animals, 
since music does not contribute to the comfort or 
development of types, and only affords pleasure 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 165 

to the intellectual being, and hence is only an 
accomplishment, obeying no rule of normal 
growth. 

As the use of the natural sense of taste makes 
possible the choice of nourishment, and all forms 
of life are thus sustained, the natural taste be- 
comes an important factor of their comfort, and 
upon this physical basis rests, perhaps, the whole 
superstructure of ethics. The first idea of owner- 
ship is doubtless found in the possession of food, 
and this right of property is protected by the 
unwritten laws of incipient life. The faculty of 
reason which man has arrogated to himself is 
only limited by that dim line which bounds the 
vital sphere and sheds its rays through all the 
kingdom of life, from that point where the vital 
spark first lights the monad, through all the laby- 
rinths of change, to man in the full pride of his 
divinity, standing upon the threshold of the an- 
gelic state. It is not by the exercise of reason 
that water flows down hill or that matter obeys 
the law of gravity ; but in the exercise of auton- 
omy, however feeble may be the motive, reason 
guides the act. The power of this faculty is 
measured by the development of others, and 
there is no point between the two extremes at 



l66 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

which reason intercepts life. The degree in 
which all the powers of sense and faculty are 
developed determines the horizon of the thing 
which possesses them. The aggregation of 
powers to act constitutes life, and the aggrega- 
tion of powers to guide the action constitutes 
reason. 

Leaving the realm of metaphysics and returning 
to the order of primates, to which we shall con- 
fine our present work, I shall resume by repeat- 
ing that not only do primates have the faculty 
of speech, but the whole family of mammals have 
some form of speech which is in keeping with 
their conditions of life. In addition to this 
declaration, I assert that all mammals reason by 
the same means and to the same ends, but not to 
the same degree. The reason which controls the 
conduct of a man is just the same in kind as that 
which prompts the ape. The latter cannot carry 
the process to such a great extent, but microsophic 
pedants have not shown in what respect the 
methods differ, only in degree. That same fac- 
ulty which guided man to tame the winds of 
commerce taught the nautilus to lift its tentacles 
and embrace the passing breeze. Yet we are 
told that reason guides the man and instinct 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 167 

guides the nautilus. These are but two names 
for light; the one is dawn, the other noon, but 
both are light. I cannot see in what respect the 
light of a lamp differs from that of a bonfire 
except in volume ; they are the products of the 
same forces in nature, acting through the same 
media, and, becoming causes, produce the same 
effects. That psychic spark which dimly glows 
in the animal bursts into a blaze of effulgence in 
man. The one differs from the other just as a 
single ray of sunlight differs from the glaring 
light of noon. If man could disabuse his mind 
of that contempt for things below his plane of 
life and hush the siren voice of self-conceit, his 
better senses might be touched by the eloquence 
of truth. But while the vassals of his empty 
pride control his mind, the plainest facts appeal 
to him in vain and all the cogency of proof is lost. 
He is unwilling to forego that vain belief that 
he is nature's idol and that he is a duplicate of 
Deity. Held in check by the strong reins of 
theology and tradition, he has not dared to con- 
trovert those dogmas which bear the stamp of 
error on their face ; he dares not turn away from 
the idols of his own conceit and read the rubrics 
written in the fossil rocks; he dares not take 



l68 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

those proofs which none can counterfeit and 
whose authority is not gainsaid ; he dares not 
lay aside the yoke which galls the neck of pa- 
tience, or breathe the air unblest by some mys- 
terious rite performed in fear. 

By such restraints his ears are closed against 
those voices which appeal to him from without 
the temple gates of his belief. In what respect 
would man be less God-like if it be shown that 
monkeys talk? To elevate the humbler ranks 
could not degrade mankind. Whether man is the 
work of Deity or was evolved by laws of change 
from primal matter; whether he was made in one 
specific act or is the last amendment to a million 
prior types ; whether he is the creature of design 
or accident — the authorship of his being and that 
of all the forms which roam the broad empire of 
life must be the same. We are all the effects of 
one Great Cause, whatever that may be, and that 
which gave to man the power of speech imparted 
it to apes ; and I can see no reason why nature 
should have drawn a line about this faculty and 
made the rest a common heritage. 



CHAPTER V. 

Certain Marks which Characterize the Sounds of Monkeys 
as Speech. — Sounds Accompanied by Gestures. — Cer- 
tain Acts Follow Certain Sounds. — They Acquire New 
Sounds. — Their Speech Addressed to Certain Individ- 
uals. — Deliberation and Premeditation. — They Remember 
and Anticipate Results. — Thought and Reason. 

As a result of my experience with monkeys, I 
shall here sum up the chief points in which their 
speech is found to coincide with that of man, 
and note those features which distinctly char- 
acterize the sounds as a form of speech. 

The sounds which monkeys make are volun- 
tary, deliberate, and articulate. They are always 
addressed to some certain individual with the 
evident purpose of having them understood. 
The monkey indicates by his own acts and the 
manner of delivery that he is conscious of the 
meaning 'which he desires to convey through the 
medium of the sounds. They wait for and ex- 
pect an answer, and if they do not receive one 
they frequently repeat the sounds. They usually 

look at the person addressed, and do not utter 
169 



170 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

these sounds when alone or as a mere pastime, 
but only at such times as some one is present to 
hear them, either some person or another mon- 
key. They understand the sounds made by other 
monkeys of their own kind, and usually respond 
to them with a like sound. They understand 
these sounds when imitated by a human being, 
by a whistle, a phonograph, or other mechanical 
devices, and this indicates that they are guided 
by the sounds alone, and not by any signs, gest- 
ures, or psychic influence. The same sound is 
interpreted to mean the same thing and obeyed 
in the same manner by different monkeys of 
the same species. Different sounds are accom- 
panied by different gestures, and produce differ- 
ent results under the same conditions. They 
make their sounds with the vocal organs and 
modulate them with the teeth, tongue, and lips, 
in the same manner that man controls his vocal 
sounds. The fundamental sounds appear to be 
pure vowels, but faint traces of consonants are 
found in many words, especially those of low 
pitch, and since I have been able to develop cer- 
tain consonant sounds from a vowel basis, the 
conclusion forces itself upon me that the conso- 
nant elements of human speech are developed 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 171 

from a vowel basis. This opinion is further con- 
firmed by the fact that the sounds produced by 
the types of the animal kingdom lower than the 
monkey appear to be more like the sounds of 
pipe instruments, and as we rise in the scale the 
vocal organs appear to become somewhat more 
complex and capable of varying their sounds so 
as to give the effect of consonants, which very 
much extends the vocal scope. The present 
state of the speech of monkeys appears to have 
been reached by development from a lower form. 
Each race or kind of monkey has its own peculiar 
tongue, slightly shaded into dialects, and the 
radical sounds do not appear to have the same 
meaning in different tongues. The phonetic 
character of their speech is equally as high as that 
of children in a like state of mental development, 
and seems to obey the same laws of phonetic 
growth, change, and decay as human speech. It 
appears to me that their speech is capable of 
communicating the ideas that they are capable 
of conceiving, and measured by their mental, 
moral, and social status, is as well developed as 
the speech of man measured by the same unit. 
Strange monkeys of the same species seem to 
understand each other at sight, whereas two 



1/2 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

monkeys of different species do not understand 
each until they have been together for some 
time. Each one learns to understand the speech 
of the other, but as a rule he does not try to 
speak it. When he deigns an answer it is usu- 
ally in his own tongue. The more fixed and pro- 
nounced the social and gregarious instincts are 
in any species, the higher the type of its speech. 
They often utter certain sounds under certain 
conditions in a whisper, which indicates that they 
are conscious of the effect which will result from 
the use of speech. Monkeys reason from cause to 
effect, communicate to others the conclusion de- 
duced therefrom, and act in accordance there- 
with. If their sounds convey a fixed idea on a 
given subject from one mind to another, what 
more does human speech accomplish? If one 
sound communicates that idea clearly, what more 
could volumes do? If their sounds discharge all 
the functions of speech, in what respect are they 
not speech ? 

It is as reasonable to attribute meaning to their 
sounds as to attribute motives to their actions, 
and the fact that they ascribe a meaning to the 
sounds of human speech would show that they 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 173 

are aware that ideas can be conveyed by sounds. 
If they can interpret certain sounds of human 
speech, they can ascribe a meaning to their own. 
They think, and speech is but the natural ex- 
ponent of thought ; it is the audible expression 
of thought as signs are the visible expression 
of the same — born of the same cause, acts to the 
same end, and discharges the same functions in 
the economy of life. To reason is to think me- 
thodically; and if it be true that man cannot 
think without words, the same must be true of 
monkeys. I do not mean, however, to claim that 
such is a fact with regard to man thinking ; but 
if such can be shown to be a fact, it will decide 
the question as to the invention of human speech, 
as it was necessary for man to think in order to 
invent, and by the rule he could not think a 
word which did not exist, and therefore could 
not have invented it. But I beg to be allowed 
to stand aside and let Prof. Max Miiller and Pro- 
fessor Whitney, the great giants of comparative 
philology, settle this question between them- 
selves, and I shall abide by the verdict which 
may be finally reached. 

But theories are useless things when the facts 



1^4 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

are known; and since I have actually learned 
from a monkey a certain sound having a certain 
value and meaning a certain thing, and by re- 
peating that sound to a monkey of the same 
species have met with uniform results, have un- 
derstood him and been understood by him, no 
argument could be so potent as to cause me to 
believe that this was accident. I am aware that 
coincidents occur, but when they become the 
rule instead of the exception, they are no longer 
mere coincidents, but are the normal state of 
things. 

In conclusion, I would say that since the 
sounds uttered by monkeys perform all that 
speech performs, is made of the same material, 
produced by the same means, acts to the same 
ends and through the same media, it is as near 
an approach to speech as the mental operations 
by which it is produced are an approach to 
thought. If it can be shown that these mental 
feats are not thought, the same process of reason- 
ing could show that these sounds are not speech. 
If man derived his other faculties from such an 
ancestry, may not his speech have been acquired 
from such a source ? If the prototype of man has 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 1 75 

survived through all the vicissitudes of time, 
may not his speech likewise have survived? If 
the races of mankind are the progeny of the 
simian stock, may not their languages be the 
progeny of the simian tongue ? 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Phonograph as an Aid to Science. — Vowels the Basis of 
Phonation. — Consonants Developed from a Vowel Basis. — 
Vowels are Compound. — The Analysis of Vowels by the 
Phonograph. — Current Theories of Sound. — Augmenta- 
tion of Sounds. — Sound-Waves and Sound-Units. — Con- 
sonants among the Lower Races. 

The application of the phonograph to my 
special work is really the discovery of a new field 
of usefulness for that wonderful instrument, 
which up to this time has held the place of a toy 
more than that of a scientific apparatus of the 
very highest importance in the study of acous- 
tics and philology. In many ways the use of this 
machine is so hampered by the avarice of men 
as to lessen its value as an aid to scientific re- 
search, and the letters patent under which it is 
protected preclude all competition and prevent 
improvements. However, I have been able, even 
with the poor machines in general use, to dis- 
cover some of the most important facts upon 
which are based the laws of phonation. I shall 

here attempt to give in detail but a few of these 
176 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. l^J 

experiments, as they are yet crude and, in some 
cases, the deductions therefrom not positively 
certain. From the various records that I have 
made of the voices of men and monkeys, I am 
prepared to say that the difference is not so great 
as is commonly supposed, and that I have con- 
verted each into the other. I would not be un- 
derstood to say that I have done this with all 
their sounds, nor that the monkeys' sounds were 
converted into human speech, but the funda- 
mental sounds of each were changed into those 
of the other. I find that human laughter coin- 
cides in nearly every point with that of monkeys. 
It differs in volume and pitch. By the aid of 
the phonograph I have been able to analyze the 
vowel sounds of human speech, which I find to be 
compound, and some of them contain as many as 
three distinct syllables of unlike sounds. From 
the vowel basis I have succeeded in developing 
certain consonant elements, both initial and final, 
from which I have deduced the belief that the 
most complex sounds of consonants are developed 
from the simple vowel basis, somewhat like chem- 
ical compounds result from the union of simple 
elements. Without describing in detail the re- 
sults, I shall mention some simple experiments 



i;8 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

which have given me some very strange phe- 
nomena. I dictate to the phonograph a vowel in 
different keys while the cylinder rotates at a 
given rate of speed. I then adjust the speed to 
a certain higher or lower rate and follow the re- 
sults. By reversing the motion of the cylinder 
the sounds are reduced to their fundamental 
state. By this means we eliminate all familiar 
intonation and disassociate it from any meaning 
which will sway the mind, and in this way it can 
be studied to advantage. At a given rate of 
speed I have taken the record of certain sounds 
made by a monkey, and by reducing the rate of 
speed from two hundred revolutions per minute 
to forty, it can be seen that I increased the in- 
tervals between what are called the sound-waves 
and magnified the wave itself five-fold, at the 
same time reducing the pitch in like degree, and 
by this means I could detect the slightest shades of 
modulation. I may remind the reader here that in 
this process all parts of the sound are magnified 
alike in all directions, so that instead of obtain- 
ing five times the length, as it were, of the sound- 
unit or interval, we obtain the cube of five times 
the normal length of every unit of the sound. 
The slightest variation of tension in the vocal 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 1 79 

chords may be detected, and every part of the 
sound compared to every other part. 

Having thus augmented the quantity of sound 
by increasing alike the sound-unit and interval, 
it can be recorded on another cylinder and mul- 
tiplied again as long as the vibrations -can pro- 
duce sound. From the constant relation of parts 
and their uniform augmentation under this treat- 
ment, it has suggested to my mind the idea that 
all sounds have definite geometrical outlines, and 
as we change the magnitude without changing 
the form of the sound, I shall describe this con- 
stancy of form by the term contour. 

In a few instances I have been able, by reduc- 
ing the record of certain sounds from a high 
pitch to a lower one, to imitate the sound thus 
reduced with my own vocal organs ; then by re- 
storing this record of my voice to its normal speed, 
I have obtained almost a perfect imitation of the 
sound. This effect, however, does not always 
follow, and in many instances my best imitations 
have not developed the original at all. But this 
presents a new problem in acoustics. I must 
here take occasion to say that the difference of 
pitch, quality, etc., in sounds does not appear to 
me to depend alone upon the length of the sound- 



l80 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

unit, but there seems to be a difference of ulti- 
mate form and mode of propagation which has 
much to do with the contour of the developed 
sound. 

By mode of propagation I mean the conduct of 
the organs used for the purpose of producing the 
sound, the apertures through which the sound- 
force passes, and the auxiliaries by which it is 
moulded into certain shapes. By ultimate form 
I mean the geometrical shape of the sound-force 
when first converted into sound. That there is 
such a thing as form has been clearly demon- 
strated by the phoneidoscope. Prof. John B. De 
Mott has very kindly aided me in reducing cer- 
tain sounds to a visible condition. I had con- 
ceived an idea before this that if the path 
described by the energy which produced sound 
could be made visible it would be found to 
have the form of a convolute spiral ; that these 
spirals recede from the centre or point of prop- 
agation in every direction like the radii of a 
sphere, and that that aspect of sound which we 
call waves is simply the point at which these 
spirals intercept each other, which of necessity 
would be of uniform distance from the centre, 
increasing at each successive point throughout 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. l8l 

the entire sotmd-sphere, or space through which 
the sound passes in all directions from the centre 
to infinity. 

I shall refrain from discussing this point till 
such time as I can show at greater length my 
reasons for this belief. I may add here that I 
have made records of the human voice with 
which I have deceived the monkeys, and I have 
made records of the monkey's voice with which I 
have deceived the very elect of linguists and 
musicians. Some critic once remarked to me 
that the sound made by a monkey was not really 
laughter, but only a kind of good-natured growl- 
ing. This may be correct, but the same is true 
of human laughter, as the one may be converted 
into the other, and a good-natured growl ex- 
presses the emotion which is felt by man as well 
as monkey. 

The phonograph shows that they are identical 
in sound and form, besides the fact that they are 
the outburst of the same passion, actuated by the 
same cause and executed by the same muscles, so 
that their identity mentally, physically, and me- 
chanically is the same. 

Among the sounds of the simian voice, I have 
not found the English vowels "a," "i," or "o," 



1 82 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

except, perhaps, " i " short as sounded in the 
word " it. " The vowel " u, " as sounded like " oo " 
in "shoot," seems to be the chief sound of their 
speech. One important point which I discovered 
from the phonograph is that sounds or tones 
which are purely musical are reproduced alike 
with the cylinder turning either way, while all 
speech sounds are slightly changed when the 
cylinder is reversed, which shows the sounds to 
be compound. I find that " w " may be developed 
from any consonant by manipulating the cylin- 
der of the phonograph, and it is a fact also that 
the initial consonant imparted to any vowel does 
not continue through the vowel. This I have 
shown by making a vowel sound which I prolong 
for some seconds with the cylinder revolving at 
a given rate of speed. While reproducing this at 
a normal speed I intercept it at any point and 
develop the sound "w" as heard in "woe." 
The instant I have blended this into the vowel, I 
lift the diaphragm until the normal speed is re- 
stored, when I replace the reproducing tooth, 
showing the sound without the consonant. . In 
like manner I dictate to the phonograph any 
vowel sound preceded by a consonant. The 
consonant I utter in a natural way, the vowel I 



. 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. I S3 

prolong for some seconds, and in the act of re- 
producing this I cut the sound in two and find 
the vowel element is not modified by the conso- 
nant which preceded it; hence I observe that 
the consonant merely suggests to the mind a cer- 
tain form of sound which does not change the 
fundamental vowel. In fact, it aids the voice 
somewhat in uttering the vowel. 

If human speech were composed of none but 
vowel sounds, the human voice could scarcely 
utter them in a continued conversation ; their 
monotony would not so much offend the ear as it 
would try the vocal powers, and man would soon 
acquire consonants to aid the voice, if for no other 
use. 

- Among the simians the better types of speech 
show this tendency, and in the lower types of 
human speech we find all the vowel elements, 
while consonants are not by any means so nu- 
merous. Another fact is that among the lower 
races of mankind double consonants are rare and 
treble more so. Of course their tongues consist 
of fewer words, as has been shown before, which 
paucity arises from their few wants and simple 
modes of life, and hence the scope of vocal 
growth is much contracted. Beginning with the 



1 84 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

lowest tribes of men, we find the consonants in- 
crease in number and complexity as we ascend 
the scale of speech. To this, perhaps, is due 
the fact that the negroes now found in the 
United States, after a sojourn of two hundred 
years with the white race on this continent, are 
unable to utter the sounds of "th," "thr," and 
other double consonants. The former of these 
they pronounce " d" if breathing and " t" if as- 
pirate. The latter they pronounce like " trw " 
or "tww." The sound of "v" they usually pro- 
nounce "b," while "r" resembles "w" or " rw " 
when initial, but as a final sound is usually sup- 
pressed. They have a marked tendency to omit 
auxiliary and final sounds, and in all departures 
from the higher types of speech tend back to 
ancestral forms. 

I believe that if we could apply the rule of per- 
spectives and throw our vanishing-point far back 
beyond the chasm that separates man from his 
simian prototype, we would find one unbroken 
outline tangent to every circle of life from man 
to protozoa, in language, mind, and matter. 



CHAPTER VII. 

The Human Voice. — Human Bag-Pipe. — Human Piccolo, 
Flute, and Fife. — The Voice as a Whistle. — Music and 
Noise. — Dr. Bell and his Visible Speech. 

One of the very curious feats which I have per- 
formed with the phonograph is the conversion of 
the human voice into the sounds of various in- 
struments. I had my wife sing the familiar 
Scotch ballad " Comin' Through the Rye " to the 
phonograph while the cylinder was rotating at 
the rate of about forty revolutions per minute. 
Each word in the song was distinctly pronounced 
and the music rendered in a plain, smooth tone. 
I then increased the speed of the machine to 
about one hundred and twenty per minute, at 
which rate I reproduced the song. It was a very 
perfect imitation of the bag- pipe with no sign 
whatever of articulation. The melody was pre- 
served with only a change of time. The speech 
character was so completely destroyed that I le- 
peated this record, to a large audience in which 
were several eminent musicians, not one of whom 
185 



1 86 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

suspected that it was not a real bag-pipe solo. 
In like manner I have converted the sounds of 
the voice into a very perfect piccolo, flute, fife, and 
into a fairly good imitation of a whistle sound. 
To produce the whistling effect and the fife 
sound the rate of speed must be necessarily very 
high, and some notes will not be perfectly con- 
verted for some reason which I have not yet fully 
understood. Some voices are much more easily 
converted into the flute effect than others. To 
get the best flute sounds a full, smooth, mezzo-so- 
prano gives the best effect. In reversing the 
operation the sounds of these instruments can 
be made to imitate the human voice somewhat, 
but not exactly. Not only in the fact that the 
modulation is wanting and there is no semblance 
to consonant sounds, but the tone itself differs in 
quality from that of the voice. 

Among other respects in which the vocal 
sounds of man and simian resemble is in the 
contour of the sounds, which I have defined else- 
where. I have called attention to the fact that 
by reversing the cylinder of the phonograph 
and repeating the sound recorded thereon, a 
musical note or sound would repeat alike each 
way. Most of the sounds made by other animals 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 1 87 

do this, but those made by man and simian alike 
show modulation, not, however, equally distinct. 
The notes of birds repeat alike both ways except 
that their order is reversed. Again, to magnify 
the sounds as I have shown it can be done allows 
you to inspect them, as it were, under the micro- 
scope, and this examination shows the contour of 
the sounds of these two genera to resemble. 

Dr. Alexander Melville Bell has shown in his 
work on " Visible Speech" that the organs brought 
into use in the production and modification of 
sounds must work in harmony with each other ; 
hence it is that by a study of the external forms 
of the mouth the movements of all the organs 
used in making any sound can be determined 
with such certainty that deaf mutes can be and 
have been successfully taught to distinguish these 
sounds by the eye alone. And it was by such a 
method that I set out to read the temple in- 
scriptions from the ruins of Palenque some years 
ago, at which time I had not heard of Dr. Bell's 
learned and excellent work. The main feature 
of those glyphs by which I was guided was the 
outline of the mouth, which the artist had sought 
to preserve and emphasize at the cost of every 
other feature, and by this process I found, to my 



1 88 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

satisfaction, some ten or twelve sounds or pho- 
netic elements of the speech used by those peo- 
ple ; but not knowing the meaning of the sounds 
in that lost tongue, I did not attempt to verify 
them. When I find the time to devote to them, 
I believe I can accomplish that. 

It is a part of my purpose in my trip to Africa 
to try to secure photographs of the mouths of 
the great apes while they are in the act of talk- 
ing, and to this end I am having constructed an 
electric trigger with which to operate my photo- 
camera at long range ; and I shall try to furnish 
to the eminent author of " Visible Speech" some 
new and novel subjects for study. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Some Curious Facts in Vocal Growth. — Children and Conso- 
nants. — Single, Double, and Treble Consonants.— Sounds 
of Birds. — Fishes and their Language. — Insects and their 
Language. 

I shall take occasion here to mention some 
curious experiments which have suggested them- 
selves to me in my work with the phonograph. 
For lack of time and opportunity I have not car- 
ried them far enough to give exact and final re- 
sults, but it has occurred to me that philology 
may be aided by taking a record of the sounds 
made by a number of children daily through a 
period of two .or three years from birth. The 
few experiments which I have tried in this par- 
ticular line are sufficient to show that the growth 
of speech obeys certain laws in the development 
of vocal power. It is apparent to me that the 
first sounds uttered by children have no conso- 
nants, and that certain consonants always appear 
in a regular succession and always single. The 
double consonants develop later, and the triple 

consonants appear to be the last acquirement. I 
189 



190 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

have not the space to go to great length on this 
subject, and my experiments have not been 
sufficient to enable me to formulate with certainty 
any set of rules by which the development of this 
faculty is uniformly governed. 

It is my purpose on my return from Africa to 
set on foot a series of such experiments, with the 
hope of ascertaining the facts connected there- 
with. And while in Africa I shall aim to make 
such records of the natives as to ascertain 
whether their speech conforms to the same laws 
of development or not. It is my earnest hope to 
be able to do the same thing with the great apes 
which I am going chiefly to study. I think if I 
can record on a phonograph cylinder the sounds 
uttered by a young chimpanzee under certain 
conditions once each day for a year or so, I can 
determine whether there is a like growth in their 
speech and to what extent the same laws control 
it. I have already observed that the quality of 
voice in a given species of monkey changes with 
his age, very much in the same manner as the 
human voice ; but I have not been able to follow 
the changes through one individual specimen by 
which to ascertain the exact manner of such 
change. 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. I9I 

The sounds of birds have been studied, per- 
haps, more than any others except those of men, 
but they have not been studied as speech nor to 
ascertain their meanings. Their musical char- 
acter has attracted attention and has been the 
subject of some discussion. My opinion is that 
much that has been said on that subject belongs 
more properly to the realm of poetry than of sci- 
ence. I think the sounds of birds are chiefly 
intended for speech, but they may supply the 
place of music in their aesthetic being ; but so far 
as I have observed, I confess that I cannot find 
that they obey the laws of harmony, melody, or 
time, and it is my opinion that most of the efforts 
to write the sounds of birds on a musical staff are 
not to be relied upon as accurate records of the 
sounds. There is no doubt that each sound ut- 
tered by a bird is in unison with some note in 
the chromatic scale of music, but the intervals 
between the tones of the same bird do not coin- 
cide with those of the human voice. It is quite 
evident that birds possess an acute sense and 
ready faculty for music, and many of them shov; 
great aptitude in imitating the sounds of musical 
instruments ; some varieties of birds, such as the 
Southern mocking-bird, the thrush, and others, 



I92 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

imitate with great success the sounds of other 
birds. They often do this so perfectly as to de- 
ceive the species to which the sounds belong. 
The songs of birds, as they are called, appear to 
afford them great pleasure, and they often indulge 
in them, I think, as a pastime ; the effect is pleas- 
ing to the ear because of its cheerfulness, and it 
is not discordant or wanting in richness of tone 
in most birds. From the little study I have 
given them, I think it safe to say that the range 
of sounds possessed by any one bird is quite lim- 
ited and their notes are strictly monophones. 
This last remark does not apply to the sounds 
made by parrots and birds of that kind. 

The parrot is perhaps possessed of the greatest 
vocal power of any other bird. He imitates al- 
most the entire range of sounds that are uttered 
by all other birds combined, and can also imitate 
the sounds of human speech from the highest 
to the lowest pitch of the human voice. In ad- 
dition to all this, he imitates many noises, such 
as the sounds of sawing wood, the slam of a door, 
and the whistling of the wind. The vocal range 
of the parrot is perhaps the most marvellous of 
all the vocal products of the animal kingdom. 
One strange thing, however, that I observed 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. I93 

among them is that the range of sounds that 
they use among themselves is very small. I have 
made some records of parrots, macaws, cockatoos, 
etc., and I find their natural vocal sounds usually 
wanting in quality: most of their sounds are 
hoarse and guttural. 

Among the gallinaceous birds there does not 
appear to be much music. There is a great same- 
ness of sounds in the different species, and they 
seem to be confined to the economic use of speech. 

In my early life I devoted much time to gun- 
ning, and I observed then and called attention to 
the fact that when a covey of birds became scat- 
tered I could tell at what point they would hud- 
dle. I could tell this by the call of one bird and 
the reply of the others. The call-bird, which was 
always the leader of the covey, would sound his 
call from a certain point near which the other 
birds would usually assemble, and during this 
time they would answer him from various other 
points. The sound used by the call-bird is un- 
like that used by the rest of the flock, but the 
sounds with which they reply to him are all alike, 
and by observing this I could always find the 
covey again by allowing them time to come to- 
gether, especially if it was late in the afternoon. 
13 



194 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

Mr. Wood, of Washington, D.C., has given 
such attention to the sounds of birds that he can 
interpret and imitate nearly all the sounds made 
by domestic birds and many of those made by 
wild birds. He has twice confused and arrested 
the flight of an army of crows by imitating the 
calls of their leader. His feats have been wit- 
nessed with astonishment by many men of sci- 
ence. 

Among fishes I have found but few sounds, 
and most of these I have never heard except 
when the fish was taken out of the water. The 
carp and high-fin, however, I have frequently 
heard while in the water. It has occurred to me 
that the sound is not the medium of communica- 
tion, but it is the result of an action by which 
they do communicate even when the sound is 
not audible. I have observed, while holding the 
fish in my hand, that when he makes this sound 
it produces a jarring sensation which is very per- 
ceptible. It is quite possible that in his natural 
element these powerful vibrations are imparted 
to the surrounding water, and through it com- 
municated to another fish, who feels it in his sen- 
sitive body instead of hearing it as sound. It 
may be accompanied by the sound merely re- 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 1 95 

suiting from the force applied, but not in itself 
constituting any part of the means of communi- 
cation. It is not unlike what we call sound in the 
fact that it is generated in the same way, trans- 
mitted in the same way, and received in the 
same way as sound. When I have time and op- 
portunity I shall carry my studies of the lan- 
guage of fishes much farther. Their means of 
communication are very contracted, but it is 
superfluous for me to say that they have such 
means. 

Many observations have already been made 
on the language of insects, and much diversity of 
opinion prevails. Very little has been said about 
the details of their intercourse, but the consen- 
sus of opinion is that they must in some way 
communicate among themselves. To me they 
seem to live within a world of their own, as other 
classes of the animal kingdom do. The means 
of communication used by mammals could not be 
available among aquatic forms, any more than 
could their modes of locomotion. Each different 
class of the animal kingdom is endowed with 
such characters and faculties as best adapt them 
to the sphere in which they live, and the mode 
of communication best fitted to the conditions of 



]q6 the speech of monkeys. 

insect life would be as little suited to mammals, 
perhaps, as the feathers of a bird would be for 
locomotion in the realm of fishes. 

I am aware that some high authorities have 
claimed that insects communicate by sounds. 
My own opinion is that they employ a system of 
grating or scratching by means of their sigmata, 
but that the sound created thus performs no 
function in the act of communicating, but is only 
a by-product, so to speak, and that the jarring 
sensation transmitted through the air is the real 
means by which they understand each other, pos- 
sibly somewhat like telegraphy, in which the 
sounds are not modulated, but are distinguished 
by their duration and the interval between them. 
I do not announce this as conclusive, but merely 
suggest it as a possible key to their mode of in- 
tercourse. 

I have observed that signs prevail to a great 
extent among ants. Some years ago I had an 
opportunity of studying a colony of ants, and I 
watched them almost daily for several weeks. I 
had seen it stated that they found their way by 
the sense of smell, but these observations con- 
firmed my doubts on that point, and I feel justi- 
fied in saying that they are guided almost if not 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 1 97 

entirely by landmarks. On the bark of a tree 
from which they were gathering their winter 
stores I observed that there were certain little 
knots or protuberances by which they directed 
their course, and which they always passed in a 
certain order. Between these landmarks they 
did not confine themselves to any exact path, and 
the concourse would sometimes widen out over 
the space of more than an inch ; but as they ap- 
proached a landmark every ant fell into line and 
went in the exact path of the others, which rarely 
exceeded in any case more than an eighth of an 
inch in width. Whenever an ant would lose its 
way it would lift its head high into the air, look 
around, and then turn almost at right angles 
from the course it was pursuing toward the path 
of the others. In scores of cases I observed that 
the outward-bound ant, when it had been lost and 
returned to the path, always came on the home- 
ward side of the landmark and passed out. On 
the other hand, if a homeward-bound ant was lost, 
it would approach from the outward side of the 
landmark and pass in. About five feet from the 
ground were two small round knots about one- 
eighth of an inch in height, and a space between 
them of about the same width. This appeared 



198 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

to be one of their most conspicuous and reliable 
landmarks, and every ant that I saw pass in or 
out during the lapse of weeks passed between 
these two points. The burdened ant always ap- 
peared to have the right of way, and when meet- 
ing another without a burden there was no ques- 
tion of this right. In such a case the burden 
was usually held aloft and the right of way 
conceded without debate. A little later in the 
season I had the opportunity of seeing the same 
colony emigrate to a point about eighty feet dis- 
tant from their original abode, at which time they 
carried large burdens and were many days in 
completing their work, but the same system and 
methods prevailed. 

As far as desire can be found in life the means 
of expression goes hand in hand with it, but I do 
not contend that desire alone is the origin of this 
faculty. So far as human ears can ascertain, the 
lowest forms of life appear to dwell in perpet- 
ual silence, but there may be voices yet unheard 
more eloquent than we have ever dreamed of. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Facts and Fancies of Speech. — Language in the Vegetable 
Kingdom. — Language in the Mineral Kingdom. 

In the first part of this work I have recorded 
the material and tangible facts with which I have 
dealt, and have not departed from such facts to 
formulate a theory beyond a working hypothesis. 
I have not allowed myself to be transported into 
the realm of fancy, nor have I claimed for my 
work anything which lies beyond the bounds of 
proof. But in the wide range through which I 
have sought for the first hint of speech, it is only 
natural that many theories have suggested them- 
selves to me from time to time, some of which 
woul4 appear almost like the dreams of hasheesh. 
But while they are like the fairyland of specula- 
tion, they are not more wild and incoherent than 
are many of the dogmas of metaphysics. And 
at this point I shall digress from my text so far 
as to say that I have followed the motives of 

language through the higher planes of life, and 
199 



200 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

thence downward to the very sunrise — to the veg- 
etable kingdom, and on through the dim twilight 
across the mineral world to that point where ele- 
mental matter is first delivered from the hands 
of force. Standing upon the elevated plane of 
human development, it is difficult for man to 
stoop to the level of those inferior forms from 
which he is so far removed in all his faculties; 
but if his senses could be made so delicate as to 
discern the facts, he would find perhaps that in 
the polity of life all horizons are equi-distant 
from each other. But looking back from where 
he stands, his powers fail to reach the real point 
of vital force at which all life began, and his con- 
tracted senses bring the vanishing-point of this 
perspective far into the foreground of the facts. 

From the highest type of human speech to the 
feeblest hint of expression there is a gradual de- 
scent, and at no point between these two ex- 
tremes can there be drawn a line at which it may 
be said : " Here one begins and here another 
ends." The same is true of other faculties, and 
from the vital centre at which matter first re- 
ceives the touch of life to the circumference of 
the vital sphere, all powers radiate alike, and 
there is no point that I can find between that 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 201 

centre and infinity at which some new endow- 
ment intercepts the line. 

Descending the scale of life by long strides, 
from man to the lowest forms of zooids, we can- 
not designate the point at which a faculty is first 
imparted to the form which has it, and this truth 
extends throughout the vital cosmos. 

The line of demarcation which separates the 
animal and vegetal is but a wavering, blended 
mezzotint, and the highest forms of vegetable 
life seem to overlap the lowest forms of animal 
so far that no dividing line is positively fixed. 
The highest types of vegetable seem to have the 
faculty of expression in a degree corresponding 
to and in harmony with the rest of their organ- 
ism. I do not mean to say that the impulse un- 
der which a plant acts is synonymous with that 
which prompts the animal, but both appear to 
be the effect of the same cause. 

In some forms of vegetation the selection of 
food of certain kinds and the aversion -to other 
certain kinds would indicate that the organism 
is capable of design and purpose in a degree per- 
haps much higher than some of the lowest forms 
of the animal kingdom. The reaching out of 
roots in search of food in the earth, the opening 



202 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

and closing of leaf and bloom, seeking the moist- 
ure and carbon from the atmosphere, suggest a 
feeble expression of desire. The choice of food 
is so well defined in some plants as to indicate a 
power of selection far greater than some proto- 
zoans exercise. It is a known fact that a change 
of food and conditions often modifies a plant in 
such degree as to make it difficult to recognize 
except by the technical laws of classification, and 
yet its identity is not lost. Such changes do 
not affect all plants in the same degree, as some 
of them will undergo a change of diet or con- 
dition without material effect. In many instances 
a marked dislike to certain kinds of food has been 
observed, and the sensitiveness of some plants 
is shown in the foliage, bloom, and even in the 
roots. 

In passing from the vegetable to the mineral 
kingdom, we find a like diffusion of types over- 
lapping and blending into each other. Some 
forms of vegetation are so low in the scale of 
organism as to make it difficult to say whether 
they are vegetable or mineral compounds. Of 
course we find no trace of speech, but there is 
that hint of expression, or suggestion of desire, 
as found in the vegetable kingdom. In the 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 203 

chemical world one element will select another 
with which it will combine, while to other ele- 
ments it shows a great aversion. When one 
chemical element selects another and combines 
with it, we call this chemical affinity. The ul- 
timate force which causes this affinity is one of 
the unknown facts concerning matter, but it is 
possible that such affinities and aversions con- 
stitute the basis upon which rest the selections 
and aversions of plants and animals. But as we 
rise in the scale, the combinations of matter be- 
come more complex and the functions of each 
part more specific. It is possible, when we be- 
come more familiar with the forces of nature, 
that we will find that affinity and repulsion are 
but the positive and negative poles of the forces 
which act on matter, and that chemical, vegetable, 
and animal activity are based upon the same 
fundamental causes, and that speech, which is 
only one form of expression, is the highest prod- 
uct of such an ultimate force, but in all condi- 
tions of matter such forces, either positive or 
negative, are the ultimate motives of expression. 
As chemical formulas differ from each other 
without losing the identity of their elements 
which constitute them, so animal organisms and 



204 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

plant forms differ as the spheres of life to which 
they are assigned differ. It is possible that 
chemical affinity may be the germ from which all 
language springs, as the chemical elements are 
the materials from which all compounds are built 
up. The vitalization of matter itself and the ar- 
rangement of the ultimate particles which con- 
stitute a living body are the work of the vital 
force in a polarized condition. This will account, 
in a measure, for all the individuals of one type 
selecting one mode of expression as they select or 
conform to one physical outline. In every rank 
of life there seems to be some intuitive mode of 
expression which suggests itself to all the indi- 
viduals of that kind when they desire under the 
same conditions to express the same thing. The 
exceptions to this law of expression increase in 
number as we rise in the scale of life, and the 
means of expression increase and widen and the 
faculty of thought enlarges. The laws of chem- 
ical affinity are rigid and uncompromising and 
there are but few exceptions in them, and only 
marked changes of condition can modify the re- 
sults. As we ascend even in the mineral king- 
dom to the higher compounds we find a wider 
range of variation, and as we continue our ascent 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 20$ 

through the vegetable world we find the same, 
and so on through animals to the highest type. In 
the lower planes types are more strictly adhered 
to, habits and food more rigidly observed, while 
among the highest types of cultivated plants we 
find a great diversity of fruit and bloom, the capa- 
bility of transplanting, and the creation of new 
species without losing the generic identity of the 
plant or even making it questionable. In the 
animal kingdom the same law is complied with, 
and step by step as we ascend the same types 
show greater and greater diversity, until we reach 
man, the climax of all life — and within his 
genus variation knows no bound. 

In conclusion, I may say that man as he now is 
has the faculty of speech. It is reasonable to be- 
lieve that he has always had this faculty since 
he was man. If there has ever been a time in the 
history of his organism when he acquired his be- 
ing from some progenitor which was not man, he 
acquired at the same time the faculty of speech, 
and that progenitor did not impart a thing which 
he did not have. While it is true that speech, as 
I have used it, is confined to vocal sounds, other 
modes of expression have preceded it, and such 
has been a common faculty inherent through all 



2o6 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

forms and planes of life. I am aware that two 
ingredients combined may make a compound 
unlike either one, and such may be the case with 
speech, bu* the elements which constitute the 
compound must have been forever present. 



CHAPTER X. 

The Speech and Reason of Domestic Animals. — Dash and 
the Baby. — Two Collies Talk. — Eunice Understands her 
Mistress. — Two Dogs and the Phonograph. — A Canine 
Family. — Cats and Dogs. — Insects. 

When I was only a few weeks old my father 
had given to him a little white poodle, which he 
called Dash. He was about my own age and 
we grew up together. In those days children 
were rocked in the old-time cradle, and I, like 
other babies, had a cradle. When I was a few 
months old, on one occasion I was left asleep in 
my cradle, and no one was in the room but Dash 
and myself. Having been disturbed in my sleep 
I woke up and cried, and Dash, seeing the con- 
dition of things, came to the cradle and, rearing 
on his hind feet, rocked the cradle with his paws 
and whined and barked until I had gone to sleep 
again. My mother has often told me of this, and 
assured me that Dash had never been taught to 
do it, but always after practised it, not only with 
myself, but with my younger brothers and sis- 
ters, until at the age of thirteen, when he came 
207 



208 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

to an untimely death at the hands of a bull-dog, 
whose name and tribe I have never ceased to 
hate. I gave Dash the burial that he deserved, 
and had a long procession of mourning children 
follow his remains to the grave, where I delivered 
the funeral sermon and we all sang a hymn. 
About three years ago, in company with an older 
sister, I visited the spot for the first time in nearly 
thirty years, but no sign of the little grave re- 
mained. 

What else but reason could have prompted this 
act? The dog had seen it done by human beings 
and had noted the result. Whether his whining 
was intended as singing or not I am unable to 
say, but, from my recollection of seeing him do 
this with the younger children, I believe that 
it was intended to soothe or entertain, and his 
barking to call some one into the room. 

A farmer by the name of Taylor, living in East 
Tennessee some years ago, owned two very fine 
collies, and they had been trained to drive the 
cattle and sheep about the farm, to drive strange 
cattle away from the premises, to guard the 
gates or gaps opened temporarily for hauling 
about the farm, and many similar duties. On 
one occasion in hay-making time, as night was 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 20Q, 

approaching, the wagon made its last homeward 
trip for the day, and the men working in the 
meadow prepared to go home. The driver of the 
wagon, supposing the men from the meadow 
were following and had closed the gates, left 
them open, and one of these was between the 
corn-field and a pasture containing a number of 
cattle. The men, however, did not follow the 
wagon, but took a near way across the field, and 
the gate was left open. While the family was 
at supper one of the collies was restless and 
barked continually, and gave such signs of un- 
easiness as to assure all that something was 
wrong. His master went to the door, and the 
dog ran to the gate in the front of the house and 
continued barking and lashing his tail with great 
energy. The master followed to the front gate, 
and the dog immediately ran barking down the 
road, but looking back from time to time to see 
that his master followed — which he did, and 
was thus led to the open gate, where he found 
the other collie on guard and keeping the cattle 
from passing, which they were trying to do. 
What less than reason could have prompted these 
dogs to such an act? And what less than speech 
could have enabled them to execute this feat? 
14 



2IO THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

They observed the neglect or error of the driver 
and foresaw the evil consequences, and it could 
only have been by agreement reached through an 
interchange of thoughts that one of them watched 
while the other gave the alarm. 

I have known some of these dogs that knew 
certain cattle by name that would go into the 
herd and drive out the one whose name was 
designated, while it is true, in other cases, that 
the dog would only drive out such as were 
pointed out to him. But many instances have 
proven that they are able to learn the names of 
the cattle. It is certain that in many cases 
dogs know the names of the children belonging 
to the family, and often distinguish them by 
name. I presume no one doubts that they learn 
their own names, so that each dog may know 
when he is called. I know a dog now living 
near Leominster, Mass., that extinguished an 
accidental fire which had been caused by the 
hired man carelessly dropping a burning match 
in some straw in the barn-yard after lighting his 
lantern. The dog had to fight the fire with his 
paws, and by the time he had extinguished it 
they were much singed. His loud barking was 
sufficient to warn the family that something un- 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 211 

usual was taking place. They soon responded to 
his call, and found that he had the fire quite 
under control. He had thus saved his master's 
barn and house from the flames, and since that 
time, as I have witnessed myself, will not allow 
any one to light a cigar with a match in his pres- 
ence. The peculiar sound which he makes un- 
der such circumstances appeals to the sense of 
fear or apprehension, and I have observed that 
•the significance of all speech depends much upon 
intonation. It is less so with man, perhaps, than 
with other animals, because of the great number 
of words which amplify and shade his meanings. 
But by a single word of human speech we can 
express many shades of meaning simply by mod- 
ulation, but having at our command so many 
words to qualify our meaning, we lose sight of 
the value and power of intonation. The diffi- 
culty of discerning the delicate shades of mean- 
ing imparted by intonation depends upon the 
mode of thought, and the simpler this is the 
keener the power to interpret inflections. One 
very important fact is that a dog only learns to 
interpret one sound on one subject at any one 
time. He cannot put together in his mind a 
great number of sounds, nor interpret complex 



2 12 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

ideas in detail. I know a dog in Charleston, 
S. C, that will fly into a rage and bark fiercely 
if you say to him, " Chad, where is that big 
black dog that whipped you so badly?" But 
repeated experiments proved to my mind that 
the dog did not interpret any part of the sen- 
tence except the words "black dog," and even 
this seemed to depend chiefly upon the sound 
"black." and by saying this sound you would get 
the same results as to use the entire sentence. 
He had been whipped by a dog of this descrip- 
tion, and had been so often reminded of it that 
he had associated the sound with the incident. 

I know a little dog in New York that under- 
stands the same sound in a similar way and for 
similar reasons. She also recognizes the name of 
the lady who owns the black dog. A family with 
whom I am on close terms of friendship owns 
an ugly little mongrel, to which two of the 
daughters are very devoted. They have reared 
her with great care, and lavished upon her many 
luxuries far better than most human beings en- 
joy. The young ladies declared to me that 
Eunice (which is the dog's name) could under- 
stand every word they said on any subject that 
she had been accustomed to hearing. 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 213 

Mattie would say to her, " Eunice, go tell Miss 
Kate to get on her hat and let us go take a 
walk." The little dog would run to Miss Kate's 
room and bark and jump until the young lady 
would comply. I found that the dog associated 
the sounds "hat" and "walk" with the act of tak- 
ing a stroll in the company of the young ladies, 
but she would act just the same when either one 
of these words was said to her as she would if 
one were to repeat a whole canto of Milton ; and 
I think the young ladies have never quite for- 
given me for trying to prove to them that Eunice 
was not a fine English scholar. 

I find, by means of many experiments, that 
much depends upon the manner of delivering 
these sounds, but that the animal is largely 
guided by the sound alone is proven by the fact 
that some dogs understand English and others 
French, German, or some other language, and 
they do not really understand, unless addressed 
in the speech with which they are familiar. A 
short time since I tried a novel experiment with 
the phonograph and two black-and-tan terriers, 
mother and son. The son was a notorious talker 
in the way of barking almost continuously at 
everything and on all occasions and at all times, 



214 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

while the mother was naturally taciturn, good- 
natured and fairly intelligent. I first took the 
son to a room where I had the phonograph, 
where I made a record of a number of sounds of 
his voice. The children aided me in the experi- 
ment by getting him to talk for food, bark at his 
image in the mirror, and by various other ways 
they induced him to utter sounds in the presence 
of the phonograph. A few days later I had 
them bring the mother to the same place, where 
I discharged the contents of my phonograph 
cylinder in her presence. She gave every evi- 
dence of recognizing the sounds of the young 
dog, and in a few instances responded to them. 
She was naturally perplexed at not being able to 
find him, and searched the horn and in various 
parts of the room in quest of the young dog. I 
delivered to her at the same time the record of 
another dog, to which she paid little attention 
except by an occasional growl and a look into 
the horn to see what it meant. She evidently 
recognized the sounds of the young dog with 
which she was familiar, and seemed to interpret 
their meanings, whereas the sounds from the 
other cylinder did little more than to attract her 
attention. 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 21$ 

Last summer I stopped at a small town in 
northern Virginia. A young man at the same 
hotel had two setters and a black-and-tan terrier. 
I experimented extensively with these three dogs 
during my stay, and deduced therefrom some 
conclusions which were inevitable. The hotel 
veranda opened on the street and was a place of 
resort for gentlemen of leisure about town. 
There was also a side entrance through a large 
yard. I have frequently observed the dogs lying 
asleep on the veranda, when the owner would 
enter the side yard on a flagstone walk, often 
in the midst of conversation of a dozen men. 
The terrier would recognize the footsteps of his 
master, would utter a low sound, and then spring to 
his feet and rush at once in the direction whence 
he heard the steps. The setters invariably 
seemed to know what it meant — would raise their 
heads and lash their tails upon the floor, show- 
ing evident signs of understanding the situation. 
I have seen this terrier recognize the steps of 
his master when the latter was accompanied by 
two or three other persons. The delicate pre- 
cision of his hearing was marvellous, and in no 
instance, so far as I observed, was he deceived in 
the approaching footsteps. I cannot believe that 



2l6 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 

he was guided by the sense of smell, as it is evi- 
dent that the setters, whose habits of hunting 
have developed in them a much more sensitive 
olfactory power, would naturally have been the 
first to have detected their master's approach, 
and yet it was equally evident that the terrier's 
ears were the first to catch the sounds. 

I have observed among dogs associated with 
each other that where one should bark in the 
distance, as though he had something at bay, his 
companion, hearing him from the house, would 
prick up his ears, listen for a moment, and then 
dash off in the direction from whence the sounds 
came ; whereas the bark of a strange dog, even 
having something at bay, would only cause him 
to listen, utter a low sound or grunt, and lie down 
again and take a nap, as much as to say, " That's 
nothing to me." I have known many instances 
where dogs would follow the farm wagon to 
town and faithfully guard the wagon and its 
contents all day long, with a fidelity that we sel- 
dom see in the most devoted servants. The at- 
tachment of a dog to his master has been a sub- 
ject of remark from time immemorial, until the 
saying has crystallized into a maxim, " as faithful 
as a watch-dog." A friend of mine had a little 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 217 

terrier whose name was Nicodemus that had a 
habit of sitting in the kitchen window to watch 
people pass the street. She assures me that on 
wash-days, when the steam would condense on 
the window-panes, Nicodemus would lick the 
moisture from the glass, in order to see through 
it more clearly. Could instinct be the guide in 
such an act? 

If man would only pause and calmly view the 
facts, he would find that he is but a joint-heir of 
nature, and why not so? From a religious point 
of view I cannot doubt that the wisdom and 
mercy of God would bestow alike on all, the fac- 
ulties of speech and reason as their conditions 
of life require them ; and from a scientific point 
of view I cannot charge the laws of evolution 
with such disorder. In either case it were a 
harsh and jarring discord in the great harp of 
nature, whether played by the hand of chance 
or swept by the fingers of Omniscience. 



THE END. 



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